In what ways can I store information for use by a computer
application? File systems, directory services, databases, XML?

I think the most common are relational databases. In this case, what
is the percentage of real world applications using relational
databases?

Where can I find literature about these subjects (journal articles,
conference proceedings...) ?

I?m asking this because I?m doing some research for my master degree
and I need a starting point...

Thank you.

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Clarification of Question by jlnovais-ga on 26 Apr 2006 06:38 PDT

Hi,

I already have a topic for the thesis.

In my work I have some information about persons (name, address, ...)
and I can transform it to any model (xml, relational, ...).

What I need to do is to choose the most common models and find the
situations where is best to use one or the other(s) model. These
situations can be: large number of items (for example, information
about 100.000 persons to 1.000.000) or the number of clients accessing
the application.

Based in my professional experience I know that xml and relational
databases are the most common ways to store information and because of
this I already have academic licences of Tamino (XML native database)
and oracle and started to do some experiments.

I need to go back and try to justify this choice based not in my
experience, but with facts from the literature (I think professional
experience is not enough)... I know this is not the best way to write
a thesis... I tried searches in ACM and IEEE but I don?t find any
interesting articles...

Thank you.

(PS: sorry for my English? English is not my first language?)

Are you still trying to come up with a topic for a masters thesis?

If you do have a topic can you explain it in general terms?

A 'relational database' is just a multiplely indexed random access file (or files)

XML is a way of describing data and data relationships in a text based
format, it is highly unlikely that any serious transactional
application would really use a text based XML file.

Realistically XML is a data interchange format.

Data storage is just files and indexes.

It is just fine storing small records in an XML-ish format, because
scanning the small chunks of data is quicker than using an index

- but if you have 1,000,000 XML sub records, an index is essential

I would recommend you following links
http://www.io.com/~jimm/writing/alternate_storage.html
XML is picking up as a datastore for anything less than a 100MB of
data. Prefer XML than flatfiles as it is out of fasion.
http://ismb01.cbs.dtu.dk/pdf/prop08.pdf
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=99830
http://www.databasejournal.com/news/article.php/3286131
If the application For anything above 1GB of data, better look for
RDBMS like SQL Server of Oracle. Though both are better even under
tera byte databases, look for options on DB2.

Hi, 

You said --"Based in my professional experience I know that xml and relational
databases are the most common ways to store information and because of
this I already have academic licences of Tamino (XML native database)
and oracle and started to do some experiments."

I'm not sure what your professional experience is, and it is probably
more intensive than mine, but I would venture that the "most common"
way of storing "information" is in unrelated text document files, and
spread sheets. Not in databases. Unless you are counting email files
as databases. The only information stored in relational (or otherwise)
databases is processed information and referance documentation. While
the amount of dynamic websites on the internet probably narrows the
field quite a bit (most blogs, news services, and forums run on MySQL
and the like), still I would venture that information stored on
computers is in office documents. For example, what are you putting
the information and research for your thesis in? A relational
database? I would guess that most of it is in a word document
somewhere.

Just my two cents. I hope it helps, and good luck!

Hi,

Thank you for the comments. They are all interesting and very useful.

Thank you.