"Documents vs. Data"?
"Documents and Data"?
Or "Documents are Data"
Traditionally we have distinguished between documents, which are static, linear files that live in a file system and data, which are small chunks of information that are stored in a database. Much, perhaps most, PHP is little more than a glue language for inserting data into templates to form documents. Ditto for many report generation tools.
What if we break down the walls? Suppose everything goes into the database, not just the "data"? A single controller turns every request to the web server into a database query. Everything is stored in one place, and gets the benefits of the database: ACID, backups, distribution, professional management, etc. Everything can be queried, and the architecture is simpler: one piece (a database) instead of two (database+file system). Furthermore the system is more flexible. Modern web servers are still crippled by the assumption that what they're doing is serving files, and that the URL structure maps to a file system. That's too limiting, especially for fully RESTful applications. To enable the next generation of web applications, we need to pull the file system out from under the web servers and teach developers to think in terms of URL design and database queries. SQL is too limited to handle data this broad. XQuery can.