Re: [xml-dev] Generating reports for XML-based tables

[Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@rpbourret.com>]

Jorge Bello wrote:

> The company I work for, have a bunch of information in an old platform
> (Oracle 7/NCR 3450) which in turn is going to be discarded.
> We want to preserve this information using a XML file for every table
> (this seems to be an easy step).

It is the easy step.

> We want to preserve some SQL-based reports (with select statements
> using "wheres" and "joins").
> 
> I'm convinced that is unavoidable to rewrite these reports and I´m trying
> to figure out what is the better way.

Do you mean that you still want the reports to work over the new XML
documents? I also think you will have to rewrite the reports.
Furthermore, you're going to need a query language/processor that can do
joins across XML documents. I think your choices are:

1) Rewrite the queries using an XML query language that supports
cross-document queries and then write a query processor for that
language.

2) Rewrite the queries using an XML query language that supports
cross-document queries and then find an existing query processor to run
the queries.

3) Put the data into another relational database and forget about XML
altogether.

Personally, I think (3) is the best option. And if the data is static
(which I assume it would be), you could use MySQL, which is very fast
but (I'm pretty sure) doesn't support transactions. Since it's free,
your only expense would be buying a new PC to run it on.

-- Ron