Re: XML_Indexing and DB_Dataobject

Alan Knowles wrote:

interesting catch22 there.. - extension wont be available by default unless it's popular, extension wont be popular unless it's available everywhere.. :)

Is this extension going to replace the PHP implementation ? No more PHP version in PHP5 ?

Do you already support indexing the XML data, or do you plan to do so ?

I've never tried it - It's built in, at present it may take some digging for the documentation to find out how to use it..

gnome-db is nice... I'm currently thinking about XML_DataObject versus a dbxml driver, as discussed with Justin Patrin. I have looked through several so-called "wrappers" and xml native database, and what comes out is : SQL does not suit XML. The first is relational, the second hierarchical. The question is : how to map one to each other ? So far, I've seen too strategy : 1 - SQL can only be used to query 2-levels relational-like XML documents. 2 - A complex mapping is automatically performed, resulting in many tables,

    with many relations

Solution 1 forbids using a wide range of XML documents, those that are "too hierarchical". Solution 2 makes a big mess out of a nicely structured XML document. Additionally solution 2 tends to be read-only. From here, I see 4 ways to go : 1 - dbxml for simple 2-levels XML document. This may be simple and

    efficient for simple needs (50% of users ?).

2 - dbxml with a mapping layer, so that one can precisely customize

    how XML is to be mapped into SQL.

3 - XML_DataObject : a dataobject obeying to a hierarchical paradigm.

    This may look like a simplified DOM. May be redundant with
    SimpleXML. Not sure though. Needs thinking.

4 - XML_Indexing : a much more low-level approach. It does not provide

    any database wrapper over XML, but a component to help the
    developer to create his own wrapper.

It looks to me like these 4 solutions can even coexist. Note, by the way, that XML_Indexing would be of great use to solutions 1, 2 and 3. -- og