Re: Allow backend to output result sets in XML

Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:

> Brian Moore <brianmooreca(at)yahoo(dot)com> writes:
> > i would like to begin work on the TODO item
> > Allow backend to output result sets in XML
>
> I am not sure why it's phrased that way --- surely the code to hack on
> is the client side, not the backend. Otherwise you need a protocol
> revision to make this happen, which implies hacking *both* ends.

Presumably libpq would continue to use the binary protocol, but other clients
could bypass libpq and just stream ascii xml queries.

Personally I don't see any point in xml, but if there was a standard query
protocol then a client could send queries to any database that supported it
without using any libraries. That might be useful. Of course you could do that
without xml, but people seem to get more excited about complying with
standards when they invoke xml.

> psql already has some code to output results as HTML tables; I'd think
> adding functionality in that vicinity would be the way to go.

That could also be useful, mainly in that it could include the data from the
query, as well as some meta data. Allowing import tools for programs like
spreadsheets to do more intelligent things with the data than currently.

--
greg