I am a newcomer to this XML technology - weeks old - and I am trying to
find some info on the web that will help me assemble a set of external entities
depending on some conditions. Here is what I am trying to
accomplish.
My document has over 400 long sections so I have split it up into 400
entities. Now at any date in time, any of the sections may change and I
would be required to keep the sections as it was and in its modified
state. Say, for example, section 40 was first modified on Jan 12, 1999
then it was modified on June 05, 1999. I wouldn't overwrite the Jan 12,
1999 entity with the modifications that occured on Jun 05. What I would do
is to make a copy of the original Jan 12 entity as a new entity with the Jun 05
modifications. This is because at any point in time I might want to view
the document as it was at a particular point in time.
That means that if I asked for the document as at Jan 31, 1999 - I should
assemble all the sections whose "date identifier" is equal to Jan 31 or
the closest one less than that date.
Is there a way, to index XML entities based on multiple identifiers/
elements so that I can dynamically put together only the entities that I
need?
Note that I may have 16 such documents all split up into its respective
entities so in putting the document together I would need to be able to identify
from the mixed set of entities, the document, the date of last modification,
etc. What related to an entity would allow me to make these
distinctions and how would I use this to manipulate the entities?
Wayne Walker
