Post-Relational Databases Flying Under the Radar

June 4, 2008

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.—In the modern IT world, SQL and XML have become such key components in the database sector that it’s difficult to remember a time when they weren't part of the architectural story.

However, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, database architectures with flexible field sizes, nested tables and loose-data typing options were winning market share and mind share. While these earlier systems lacked the tagging that in many ways defines XML as XML, they behaved in a remarkably similar manner in all other respects.

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