Re: [xml-dev] XML aggregation question?

[Robert Koberg <rob@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Andrew S. Townley wrote:
<snip/>
 > Does anyone know anything about using either the REST API or something
 > equivalent in a different XML DB?  Any gotchas that you're aware of or
 > things I should think about if I go this route?  Like I said, this was
 > one of the things I was looking at implementing anyway as the primary
 > mechanism to access the repository, however it would've been nice just
 > to edit the instances directly from the filesystem with your favorite
 > text editor.

<winning-friends-and-influencing-people>
A few years ago I really wanted to use an XML DB for a project. I had 
narrowed it down to Tamino and Sleepycat's XMLDB. Tamino folk were 
willing to give it away for something close to free (for now...). 
Sleepycat's XMLDB offering was supposed to be open source and free if 
you don't distribute. Since we were going to deploy on a webserver (for 
a non-profit no less) and did not consider our webapp as something that 
was going to distributed we started working with the XMLDB product. 
After spending a few weeks working with it I thought it would be a good 
idea to clarify with sleepycat. To my surprise I would need to pay 
US$50k to license their product even if I simply downloaded on the 
server machine (I would be developing elsewhere and that is what 
constitutes distribution... now...). That, you see was a deployment in 
their eyes. I argued. Their claim probably would not hold up in court 
according to the existing at-the-time GPL license (look at the main 
driver in the new GPL - it was a sleepycat guy...).

Why everything NEEDS to be open is beyond me. (Why I would want to see 
another Open Source CMS is kind of like needing to see another lawn 
mowing pattern.)

I did not want to deal with it and hired a RDB consultant...

In other words, if you work on your laptop with a GPL product for 'some 
thing' with the latest license and you push that 'some thing' to a 
server, you might be in trouble.

...skipping forward to recent xml-dev thread ...

OK... so I tried eXist XMLDB recently after some posts/comments to this 
list. I did not go with it even though I had/have high hopes for the 
product. I really hope it can be something worthwhile. When trying it 
though, there always seemed to be some bug the popped up that would 
'always be fixed in the next subvesrion commit/update'. That's great, 
but not something to base a current deliverable on. I have been watching 
the list for eXist and it does not seem to change - there is always 
something...
</winning-friends-and-influencing-people>

fwiw,
-Rob