Nagging:
Who's to say what XML was "designed for"? I
thought it was designed as a flexible meta-language that would grow and extend
into things the original creators never thought of (similar to HTTP, which I am
sure TBL never thought about web service and SOAP - but it STILL works
:).
I have seen router XML files in the gigabytes
(guess they should be smart about partitioning into smaller documents?) I
have seen text documents in the hundreds of megabytes (I suppose they should use
SGML). . . and this is a problem people WILL have to address.
I don't think that using an XML
document as a replacement for a database is a particularly good
idea
Are you strictly referring to relational databases,
with their rigid structures, files systems (which are themselves a data base),
maybe a b-tree or hierarchical or network set of structures? Maybe you
have never worked on a project that just wasn't suited for a "structured
database", since the data was often one of a kind (heterogeneity), often
changing (extensibility), and the data frequently needed to be repurposed for
other users downstream (adapatbility).
Solving:
Like the Sedna XML database, NeoCore XMS
allows these types of changes in-place, in the database, without the need to
round trip the XML to a client machine. It is as simple as the Sedna
database as well,
INSERT('<name>Jane</name>','/ND/Entry/name[.="Jon"]') You can
find this database with free, unrestrictive download at http://www.xpriori.com/ And I don't
think they tell you how to use it, you can use it for whatever you want,
including managing large heterogenous XML documents.
Owen
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 10:18
AM
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Question for
updating existing XML file
First time posting, new to the
list.
How do you update your XML files?
Example:
(in a huge XML file...)
<Entry>
<name>Jon</name>
</Entry>
...
If I want to update the name to Joe, or add
another name Jane. So the node looks like this:
(in a huge XML file...)
<Entry>
<name>Joe</name>
<name>Jane</name>
</Entry>
...
Is there a way to do this kind of update
without rewrite the whole file? My file is about
50MB.
I
wonder whether this is a wise way of using XML. Even with XML databases,
most databases are optimized to handle large numbers of small/medium
documents rather than a single gigantic one. I don't think that using an
XML document as a replacement for a database is a particularly good idea.
It's not the job it was designed for.
Michael
Kay
