Re: From TODO, XML?

jgray@beansindustry.co.uk wrote:
> 
> In article <3B615336.D654E7E1@mohawksoft.com>, markw@mohawksoft.com (mlw)
> wrote:
> > I was looking over the todo list and saw that someone wanted to support
> > XML. I have some quick and dirty stuff that could be used.
> >
> 
> I'm not clear from the TODO what that "XML support" might involve. The
> reference to pg_dump suggests an XML dump format for databases. That only
> makes sense if we build an XML frontend that can load XML-based pg_dump
> files.
> 
> I can't see any very useful application though, unless someone has a
> standard for database dumps using XML -I'd have thought that our current
> "list of SQL statements" dump is fine (and useful if you speak SQL)

Actually I have been thinking about a couple projects I have done. Vendors like
to think XML is a way to distribute databases.

So a parser that can scan a DTD and make a usable create table (...) line would
be very helpful. One which could compare a DTD to an existing SQL table and map
XML data correctly. (Or error if conversion from data to SQL types yields an
error.)

During a database export, a SQL table could be used to create a DTD.

I was thinking along the line of being able to use XML as a fairly portable
import/export feature. Having this ability, as a generic solution, would have
made several tasks MUCH easier.

I would also like the XML parser to be fuzzy enough to take some bad XML
(because ALL XML is bad), because a lot of vendors like to distribute data in
bad XML.


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