Re: XML ouput for psql

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.

Before thinking about xquery you have to think about the role tuples and
relations play in storing xml data. The simplest route is to store your
xml data in a blob object and use little tricks like xslt to extract
elements out of the document into separate fields for index purposes and
use vanilla sql queries to get the data. This is a very loose coupling
of sql and xml and leads to very brittle designs because at the very
least you have to store two separate definitions of your data as well as
your marshalling xslt scripts.

I wrote a little blob based xml server which you can see here if you are
interested:
http://www.radiosoft.com/freetools.php?Location=Directional+Patterns
The real magic was in the xslt which you can't see, though.

A tighter coupling would involve decomposing your xml structure into
discrete objects and building xml power into the backend. I think it is
yet to be proven if this is even reasonably possible. The big problem
with xml is that there is too many ways to do things, for example the
choice of dtd or schemas. I think, the problem with this approach is
recomposing your document involves complex or inefficient queries. If
you think this is good idea, good luck, many companies have tried and
I've personally not seen one that seems to work very well. The next
major version of MS SQL server is rumored to be something of an xml
document server, and that's been several years in development.

Merlin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Calco [mailto:robert(dot)calco(at)verizon(dot)net]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 9:10 AM
> To: Merlin Moncure; Alan Gutierrez
> Cc: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
> Subject: RE: [HACKERS] XML ouput for psql
>
> I would like to see PostgreSQL eventually support XQuery:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/
> http://www.w3.org/TR/query-datamodel/
>
> I see potentially an alternative front end called xsql, providing
> substantially the same functionality as psql, only using XQuery syntax
and
> optionally returning recordsets as XML.
>
> Anybody want to put together a team to explore this seriously? There
are
> probably several non-trivial semantic issues on the back end, but I
only
> dimly grasp them at this point.
>
> - Bob Calco
>
> %% -----Original Message-----
> %% From: pgsql-hackers-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
> %% [mailto:pgsql-hackers-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org]On Behalf Of Merlin
Moncure
> %% Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 8:16 AM
> %% To: Alan Gutierrez
> %% Cc: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
> %% Subject: Re: [HACKERS] XML ouput for psql
> %%
> %%
> %% XSLT could be used to convert virtually any xml table format
directly
> %% into an insert statement. For me, this is better than using a
> %% programming language plus a parser. XSLT is quite powerful and
fast
> and
> %% is build on top of xpath, and is a closer fit to the declarative
> %% programming model of sql. Validation could be done at the xslt
stage
> or
> %% with schemas, which I prefer.
> %%
> %%
> %% > Acually, the difficult part has been getting the information back
> %% > into the database. Getting it out is a very simple query. I
imagine
> %% > that every language/environment has an SQL->XML library
somewhere,
> %% > but I wasn't able to find something that would go from XML to
SQL.
> %% >
> %%
> %% ---------------------------(end of
broadcast)--------------------------
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