pcplantdb

[John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

I'm with RichardA on this.
XML *in* the data *in* the DB?!? Yuk.  I mean, Yuuukkkkkk!

Data import/export/transport - sure, that's what it was designed for.
The rant he links below is IMO more of a good clear explanation of the 
situation than a rant.

Richard Archer wrote:
> 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.


--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
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