Re: [seul-edu] XML and my project

[Bruno Vernier <vernier@vc.bc.ca>]

On Mon, Nov 15, 1999 at 12:53:27PM +0300, rnd@sampo.karelia.ru wrote:

Hi Roman, nice to hear from you!

> So, to boil it down, the question is:
> 
> - what  do  I  need  to  make  a  relational  database  from  a
> collection of XML files? 
> (I already know how to use XQL to  make  queries  in  a  single
> file, but if there are several files and I need relations?)

I've used xmlscript (free but not open source) at the shell level to do these
conversions, http://www.xmlscript.org

.. and now use zope (www.zope.org) web application server which
already has modules for connecting to SQL databases and XML files.  A year
ago, I introduced the idea of XML in education on this list, and now I would
like to introduce the idea of web-application servers for education: and
zope is the most advanced open-source web application server available now.
Compare with non open-source: vignette, cold-fusion, frontier (userland).

A zope server can handle multiple simultaneous database connections AND xml
file parsing... all in a very visual object oriented fashion... making
maintaining a project such as yours a joy especially in the 
long run.  I use postgresql for the SQL database, tinyTables for small
databases, and XML files... and the whole zope server data is stored as a
single database as well (which makes it feel fast).

> I remember, there were such talks in seul-edu  some  time  ago.
> Things change rapidly, so if somebody knows a prooved answer  -
> please, let me know. Thanks!

I am building the proof right now.  My work in progress is on:
http://roberts.vsb.bc.ca/zope/eduml

I am slowed down by the sheer volume of cool features coming out these 
days from the zope community. http://www.zope.org  

Bruno

p.s. xmlscript is at http://www.xmlscript.org