[ZODB-Dev] Re: AW: diploma thesis: ZODB Indexing

[Martijn Faassen]

Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
> On Sep 5, 2007, at 9:39 AM, Christian Theune wrote:
[snip]
>> I also have the feeling that our goal for ad-hoc querying would be 
>> incompatible with your envisioned framework for defining
>> collections and indexes.
> 
> I guess I have no idea what you are talking about.
> 
> I assumed you meant something along the lines of what people expect
> of relational databases.  In the relational world, people define
> tables and indexes in order to be able to do indexed ad-hoc queries.
> Maybe you are talking about something else.

It is interesting to compare with XML databases. Some XML databases like 
MonetDB or eXist offer XPath queries into the database without anyone 
having to pre-define indexes. Basically these databases tend to index 
the entire tree structure. I'd suggest reading the eXist papers that are 
about. I'd also take a look at MonetDB, as at its core it's a general 
database system which has a RDB and XML db built on top.

http://monetdb.cwi.nl/

I'm not sure how many of these ideas can be translated to work for 
Python structures - XPath is rather specific to XML, after all. But if 
anyone wants to talk about my ideas on all this, let me know. :)

Regards,

Martijn