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I concur that we need to remain civil. Overall both this article and the original have evoked a good deal of discussion - good discussion! I'd hope that each might learn something from the opposing view.

Maybe Im old, or not old enough, but I rarely see black and white anymore, lots of gray in the world. Very few things are absolute.

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Andy and others...

I agree that the discussion has been desperately needed (hence my original article.) I have also been tremendously gratified by the response. I frankly didn't expect the article to get published at all. That it was is a testament to the editorial teams' fairness and open-mindedness. When it was published I expected a largely negative reaction given that I as "attacking" one of the hottest trends in the business. That the responses were, for the most part, fairly well reasoned is a testament to the quality of the SQL Server Central audience. Many thanks to the SQL Server Central team and to the community in general.

That being said, Chris Date introduced the concept of what he called the "incoherence principle" which states "That which is incoherent is difficult to treat coherently." Some replies could be poster children for the incoherence principle, and in my replies the diffuculty of dealing with them in a rational manner may have shown through in the form of frustration. For this I appologize, especially since I know that the worst way to convince people is to insult them.

However, as a DBA I can't afford to allow poor practices to jepordize my data for the sake of getting along. In fact you could say that many of us DBAs have made careers out of frustrating developers For as long as I have been in the business I have had to tell developers "NO." XML is just another iteration of that cycle.

If the developers could have their way, we would have no constraints on our data at all! I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard one complain that I am making their job difficult because I won't (more properly the database won't) let them do something. In almost every case, they are absolutely correct and the thing they are wanting to do SHOULDN"T BE DONE!

Now, don't take this as a slap at developers in general. "Some of my best friends are develpers!" To be certain, there are many who understand the importance of data management, but in general their focus is much different so it becomes my job to force the issue.

Many of the arguments for XML are essentially: "But XML makes using these poor practices soooo easy, and the vendors all say it's O.K..." But the real problem is that many are so ignorant (not stupid) that they don't even realize that what they are wanting IS a "worst practice." And since it is somewhat disguised by industry hype, many who should know better are fooled too.

Andy, you can't be as old as you intimate if you don't recognize the pitfalls of hierarchical data management.