pcplantdb

[Richard Archer <pcplantdb@juggernaut.com.au>]

At 12:09 PM -0600 16/11/04, Chad Knepp wrote:

>  o XMLized dataset:  The one place where I think XML actually does
>    make a lot sense is inside the database itself.  Three tags I can
>    think of immediate are temperature, height, and link tags.
>    Clients in the US will want Fahrenheit and Feet while Europeans
>    will want Celsius and Meters.  Non html based clients will need to
>    be able to translate links into something meaningful.

XML is not the correct solution to that problem. What you need to do
is store the values all in either Metric or Imperial and convert them
at display time based on the user's preference. This allows efficient
storage and search of numerical values by the SQL database. It also
allows simple joins which would quickly become a nightmare if the
data in the database is all encoded in XML.

IMHO the ONLY valid use for XML is for data interchange. e.g. if you
wanted to regularly move data from the Eden database to say the PFAF
database you might want to use XML as an interchange format and have
an XML generating/parsing script at each end to convert from the
common XML format to the local format.

The best XML rant I've read is archived at:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/lists/phplib-list/2001081/0023.php

 ...R.