[sdo] Simple question with (possibly profound?) implications on SDO 3 :-)

[Frank Budinsky <frankb@ca.ibm.com>]

Hi,

I've been thinking a lot about sequenced types in SDO lately, and am 
starting to wonder if anybody knows of a use case for SDO Sequence, other 
than for XML fidelity? Even though the spec tries to explain sequenced 
types as being something more abstract than just support for accessing and 
manipulating the XML serialization order and mixed text, I can't think of 
any such use cases. If anybody has a compelling example that I'm missing, 
please let me know.

If it is really only for XML, I think we should consider changing the name 
in SDO 3, because of the fact that XSD sequence and SDO sequence are 
almost the opposite of each other (i.e., an XSD type that is simply an 
xsd:sequence of elements is NOT a sequenced type in SDO). Also, if 
Sequence is really just an XML thing, getSequence() may not really belong 
in the DataObject interface, and/or perhaps it should be an optional 
feature in SDO 3.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Frank.