need advice on how to store xml data in database

have 1,000's word docs than can be converted to xml..

[IPfreely]

hello!
we have several thousand MS Word docs on our website that i've been considering converting to XML. i just can't figure out how i should be storing the data so users can search not only these files, but also the rest of the website. i've been doing a bit of research for my situation but can't seem to find any solid answers on how to handle xml and databases.

our Policy department needs to update the documents constantly & our members need to be able to search the new Policies. right now i'm stuck with uploading a new word docs every time a new law is passed and i have to update all the files...

anyone have any experience on how to handle xml & databases?

thanks for reading this,
IPfreely

[irnbru]

Which platform does your webapp run on?

You don't need to convert your documents to XML to have them searchable.

[IPfreely]

hi irnbru - our webserver is running apache/redhat enterprise 3. i mean i know i can have some search engine search our word docs but i'm trying to move us away from our dependence on the .doc format. i just don't feel it's a good form of document exchange on the web. every policy we have is in the exact same format and our member have no reason to edit them, just read them so it'd save space as well. ..

[Mardi_Gras]

It won't help you yet, but Microsoft is planning to move away from the .doc storage format in Office 12 and move to a version of XML as the native storage format for Word "docs."

[macrost]

Well here's a thought that might help you in your search. Depending on your language, you might be able to "read" the doc. Once you have the doc in memory and are able to read line by line, I suppose you could use regex to identify the sections, and then build the xml on the fly to be inserted into the db.

Just a couple of thoughts, hope it helps!

[IPfreely]

hi macrost!
i just purchased a program called Altova XML Suite 2005 so that will probably handle any document conversion i need to do. it looks pretty cool from what i've seen so far. thanks for the thought though!