RE: [xml-dev] XML aggregation question?

[David Lyon <david.lyon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 19:21 -0700, Michael Rys wrote:
> What about all the Express versions of the relational database products
> that have XML features such as SQL Server 2005 express
> (http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/express/default.mspx) or Oracle
> 10gR2 Express?
> 
> They should be free (have some processing limitations though like amount
> of data) but are normally fully functional for the general SQL and XML
> functionalities.

I'm sure that they are quite good products and have good stuff in them.

But unless I have missed something obvious, it's beyond the scope of any
databases to do aggregation between enterprises at a low cost. If they
did, the dba's and security-administrators would riot and immediately
disable it. 

If you think about it, this is something that is possible now via
replication. If a company uses a vpn, it can be moderately secure.

What isn't happening with the replication approach is that everybody
want's to design their own database format. So the whole idea falls
flat.

For xml, what I think it needs is for a database schema to be published
(maybe like the one I published before) whereby replication and
aggregation become a much simpler proposition.

Maybe one company has Oracle, another SQL-Server but the XML Aggregation
can work regardless.

In 15 years, what has changed is that any company that can afford a
computer can afford a state of the art database. Proprietory,
open-source or even bundled (MDAC), they are all superbly good.

Once again, at its simplest, all that is needed is to hold a simple xml
document table that for illustration purposes looks a little like this:

 Document_ID AutoIncrement
 Document_Type VarChar(40) 
 Document_Date DateTime
 Owned_BY Integer       (0=Self, xx=Other company)
 Shared_with Integer	(0=Self, xx=Other Company)
 XML_Document Memo
 Replication_Status Char(1)
 expiry_date DateTime

As the numbers of documents in an xml system increase, storing them in
an appropriate database becomes a necessity. I can't see any way back to
the file system for me or my customers.

Also, once the xml documents are transferred and stored, integration and
data reading can happen from there. The whole thing is a little bit
safer than just leaving the files in the file system.

Regards

David