xml-dev - Re: XML and LDAP: Common APIs?

[Lauren Wood <lauren@sqwest.bc.ca>]

On 24 Aug 2000, at 13:58, Jeff Turner wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I was just thinking how similar the XML and LDAP data models are. LDAP
> gives you a tree, where each node can contain data -and- can act as a
> namespace for other nodes. This corresponds pretty closely to XML (or
> maybe SML).
> 
> Has anyone explored the possibility of crossover APIs for accessing all
> these 'tree-like' data structures in a standardised way? I'd like to be
> able to traverse an LDAP directory with DOM or SAX.

I can't see any reason why this shouldn't work; as long as you have 
some sort of tree structure, why not use getParentNode and have it 
return as close to the same thing as possible? Not everything from 
DOM or SAX will be applicable, but it would be good to have those 
methods which do the same thing being called the same as well, 
so the meaning is recognisable. 

On a side note, I've even had people talk to me about using DOM 
methods to walk a text document, where you map the lines into 
the equivalents of elements, with the line breaks being the 
demarcation between them. Then you can apply (some) DOM 
methods to the resulting tree. I'm still not sure why anyone would 
*want* to do this, but it's possible.




Lauren