On the project that I am on at the moment, we are following an increasingly familiar pattern. A primarily relational database with one or two XML fields. The XML fields store either data that requires an extremely flexible structure or data that is very object-oriented.
I was wondering whether this signals the need for a new kind of database. Relational databases answer many challenges bu not always perfectly, Object databases are often less performant but meet data requirements well. Maybe it is time to bring the two together and create a true ORDBMS, not the type that Oracle tried but one where a relational database has object fields that are in effect mini but true ODBMS instances.
