Re: Can XML reports do this?

[Alaric Snell <alaric@alaric-snell.com>]

Quoting Sanjay Sharma <leoaugust@yahoo.com>:


> A practical problem with XML data and reports generated from them  ...
[...]
> If there is a "world" in the zip file, akin to the grain of sand, then
> the
> reports may be generated to understand the worlds in the grains of sand,
> or
> the beach where the sand is, or the effect of the breeze on the sand
> dune on
> the beach, or the effect of the changing dune back on the grain of
> sand."
> 
> Can XML help create all these kinds of reports ...

Oddly enough, that's what I'm working with. It's a system I've inherited rather
than designed myself, but here's how it works.

The system documents a series of machines, services, procedures, and so on.

The directory structure contains top level directories for each category.

Within each category, there is one directory per "thing".

Within the "thing" directory, one or more of info.xml or auto.xml exists.
info.xml is hand-edited stuff. auto.xml is autogenerated information from a
probe.

Some scripts (using GNU autoconf, actually) generate a master XML file
containing entity references to all of those files. It also generates, arond
each entity, a "root element" for each .xml file, containing the directory name
in an "id" attribute.

Eg, if we have machines/foo/info.xml and procedures/eating-fish/info.xml, it
might create:

<!DOCTYPE input [
<!ENTITY machines.foo.info "machines/foo/info.xml">
<!ENTITY procedures.eating-fish.info "procedures/eating-fish/info.xml">
]>

<input>
<machines>
 <machine id="foo">&machines.foo.info;</machine>
</machines>
<procedures>
 <procedure id="eating-fish">&procedures.eating-fish.info;</procedure>
</procedures>
</input>

...we had to write our owns scripts, but it works.

> 
> Thanks,
> Sanjay
> 

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software