The relational data model and the SQL query language are an essential part on any computer science curriculum and are well understood by a large number of developers. On the other hand, the use of markup technologies such as SGML and XML for content management and publishing has remained a niche market for highly specialized vendors and consultants.
Today, the majority of developers use XML for application configuration files (e.g. Spring, Hibernate, JSF), syndication (RSS), and web services. When these developers are asked to design and develop XML content management and publishing applications, they often approach the problem from a relational data paradigm which is what they know and are used to. For example, when migrating content stored in a relational database into an XML format, they will simply dump the relational tables into a flat XML representation. The problem is that content is not relational data. The following are some fundamental differences between content and relational data:
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