Re: [xml-dev] XML aggregation question?

[James Fuller <jim.fuller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Henry S. Thompson wrote:
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> Andrew S. Townley writes:
> 
> 
>>This is a valid point.  I know it will make a difference, but I'm trying
>>to evaluate it on the smallish scale:  lots (1000s) of small docs in the
>>< 1K range which might have a lifespan of a week to years.  The
>>reliability of the data is important but the availability isn't quite as
>>crucial so long as it is reasonably available for some vague definition
>>of "reasonably".  :)
>>
>>At the moment, I'm still in the thinking/prototyping phase to see if my
>>idea is even viable or not.  If it is, it could evolve into a couple
>>orders of magnitude bigger and with appropriately more demanding
>>availability requirements, but that's waaay down the road, but it is a
>>consideration.
> 
> 
> Well, for the phase you're in, and even the next phase, I'd encourage
> you to look at an all-XML no-DB solution.  The kind of architecture
> I've used for e.g. an admissions management application (1000
> applications, 1.5K doc per applicant) works with a master document
> like this:
> 
> <decisions xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude";>
>  <decision>
>   <xi:include href="a34034.xml"/> <!-- an <applicant> element -->
>   <rank>32</rank>
>   <outcome>Accept</outcome>
>  </decision>
>  <decision>
>   <xi:include href="a34182.xml"/> <!-- an <applicant> element -->
>   <rank>50</rank>
>   <outcome>Pend</outcome>
>  </decision>
>  . . .
> </decisions>
> 
> Convert this for your purposes into
>  <statuses>
>   <status value="xxx">
>   <xi:include href="w34034.xml"/> <!-- a <widget> element -->
>   </status>
>   . . .
> 
> Plus pipelines [1] which e.g. run XInclude followed by XSLT to extract
> appropriate views.


> Obviously way too schematic, but gives you the idea, I hope.
> 
> Or you may want to have two layers of virtual documents, with one file
> per status, and 
> 
>  ( echo "<statuses>" ; cat currentStatus/*.xml ; echo "</statuses>" ) | \
>   [XIncl and XSLT pipeline]

agree with the points here...I have used Ant as a controller to various 
fix-up, xslt, xinclude processing to good effect at this scale as well.

--Jim Fuller