Re: XML ouput for psql

* Merlin Moncure <merlin(dot)moncure(at)rcsonline(dot)com> [2003-03-05 10:03]:
> This is just about a total conversion of the backend to an xml document
> server. The marriage of xml and sql is awkward and not easily
> retrofitted to existing databases.
>
> Its pretty much proven that hierarchal storage techniques (xml included)
> are more difficult to manage and use than traditional sql databases.
> However, xml does have some very powerful supplemental technologies for
> document generation on the client end, especially xslt. Unless there
> is a compelling reason to use those tools, you are 99% likely better off
> not using xml at all. XML has also found a niche in the edi world, but
> in this case you can get away with using the blob technique below.

I suppose this was in response to my comments, hard to tell with all
the top posting...

I am not advocating adding XML storage to the PostgreSQL backend.
XML is just a stupid little tag language. PostgreSQL is so much
more.

I adopted XML in my application to generated HTML via XSLT in
Internet Explorer. XSLT is very useful when the interface is
expressed in HTML. It has been as good a format as any for
transmitting documents and storing them on file system.

Yes, mapping XML to SQL requires developer intervention. The little
program I wrote makes it very simple to express the mapping from and
XML element to db table.

It seems like it might be a useful add on. Maybe it could be kept
with the back end, and written in C.

Getting the information out PostgreSQL has been simple, I've used
Perl. Getting information back in has been simple with my utility
which will check if the element is already stored as a row, and
update, otherwise it will insert. It can also delete rows based on
the document and keep track of placeholder values used by the client
program to represent SERIAL values in database.

What I've got is a system where I post an XML document to a URL and
it gets mapped out to my normalized PostgreSQL schema.

--
Alan Gutierrez - ajglist(at)izzy(dot)net
http://khtml-win32.sourceforge.net/ - KHTML on Windows