Re: [xml-dev] XML aggregation question?

[David Lyon <david.lyon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 09:23 -0400, Robert Koberg wrote:
> Cool. I would hope any others would speak up. I claim no final 
> experience on the matter :)

xml aggregation is a really interesting problem. So much so that now I
think aggregation and xml should be inseparable partners.

If you think about it from the helicopter perspective, we all should be
able to stick "whatever" in an xml file and then be easily able to
aggregate it to "everybody" else. And obviously have it trackable back
to us. That would be a very powerful tool.

That to me, is what I think of as xml aggregation.

To achieve that, you really need to develop some special tools. Because
most traditional tools and protocols won't support this type of business
rule. Maybe it is a business rule that we didn't know we needed. I can
think of many examples where it might be extremely useful.

RSS has done a lot in showing us some possibilities.

I seem to spend a lot of time myself working on real-life aggregation
issues. So I am surprised when I don't hear any mention of 'Jabber'. It
is a 'real-xml' protocol and could easily be modified to support
aggregation.

But there are framework issues also. Where to locate your 'anything.xml'
file in the file system for aggregation. Then being able to support
'custom' xml files that are different for particular recipients -
because not everybody will always get the same information.

Then once you are done there. You need to go to the receiving end. And
look at managing all the issues that are created by the above. Storing
the documents in a way that makes them all easily retrievable and
processable.

An SQL database seems to be a good way to manage the above because the
issues get too complex for a pure filesystem implementation. 

It all makes for good entertainment, just like xml-dev sometimes. 

I do agree with Pete in that it would be really nice to have a basic xml
aggregator tool that would be available for free and be open source. My
experience is that Open Source isn't as easy as it sounds - even giving
away stuff can be more involved than it initially might seem.

Regards

David