I've done a lot of reading since this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
and have learned a lot about XML. I'm getting ready to dig into a project which requires a database, some form of distributed data exchange - XML-RPC, SOAP, WDDX, or? and lastly, RDF/RSS. My database will need to be updated on a regular basis - weekly to start but then as I automate it, daily. The other databases are updated at varying times.
Originally I had planned on creating my own DTD's (one of the dud threads from the last 48hours) but now have decided to create my own XML Schema - I think. The question I have is which database format would you use? My website is running on an Apache/linux combo so I could implement the Apache XML db and SOAP. I've heard, however, that the hooks for working with that XML db are limited and that it may be better to use PHP/MySQL for updates and then dump the db to an XML document for XML use.
Any thoughts would be most appreciated.
GB
Prayers are always answered!
Try this forum....i think it might be very relevant.
[zend.com...]
Barry
I've been reading through so much stuff that my head's spinning. I've never worked with XML as I plan to in this project. This project affects at least 4 web servers (could be as many as 12-20 in a year) across the planet so I want to be sure I choose the best approach for the task. The problem is that despite my best efforts at learning what I need to know as quickly as possible, without the experience I'm shooting in the dark! I've only recently begun to feel knowledgeable enough to ask questions - but with the lack of responses I'm beginning to feel I should have waited until I understood more. Awfully frustrating.
But I appreciate your response and will go plow through the resources at Zend. Thanks!
GB
I quite like the idea of XML as a cross-platform data export/import format (I do a lot of data work and why just be greatful if some people could figure out how to stop creating broken CSV text files as sadly XML is beyond most of them!), if you do use a real database for the back-end systems then you should quite easily be able to make the database extract information to an xml format.
The reason I would advise using a real database instead of an XML based database is that from what I've read/heard mySQL is a reasonably good lightweight database as long as you don't want to put it under a really heavy load or attempt the more complex db operations.
I find it hard to believe that someone could assemble a comparitable product based on XML in such a short space of time when compared to the development cycles of the other mainstream rdbms which have spanned many years.
- Tony
ps.
okay I know its against my own advice but I use XML databases through-out my site and haven't really encountered any problems, *but* if i had the cash to spare I'd pay to get access to a SQL-type database. This is because I know what they are capable of, whereas I'm not overly sure about how some of my XML databases/scripts will cope under load.
On a related note: I'm still tring to figure out which technology to write the spec for the communications between databases on different servers. I'm considering XML-RPC, SOAP, and WDDX. Do you have any experience with these?
GB
