Re: Data format

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

In message <35C9C3A1.D6A98577@appliedtheory.com>, blizzard@appliedtheory.com writes:
>I've looked through the proposal that's on the linuxunited web site and
>I have a couple of ideas.
>
>Specifically, a standard exists that will allow you to describe the
>content of articles in a very meaningful way: XML.  This would offer a
>great deal more flexibility than the current system.  The current system
>as I've read it uses a header to describe it's contents, something like
>this:

Yes, I've been looking at XML for a while. The people on the Yoga and
Casbah projects keep talking about how great it is for packaging information
going from one component of the system to another. I think XML is a fine
solution for storage/communiation of news articles in the nntp-side of LNN.

However, there are two parts to the format issue: there's the metalanguage
(for which XML is a good answer), and there's the question of what fields
we want to use. How was wrap those fields is a nice thing to answer, but I
think the biggest question right now is which fields we're going to use. This
is something that I'd like to get the people in charge of the news sites to
hash out, because presumably they're the ones who would be getting and using
this data.

Can I put you in charge of making sure XML will still fit with our plans as we
start fleshing things out, Chris?

>This may seem a little verbose but it does a really good job of
>describing the data involved.  Also, it doesn't dictate the format in
>which the data is stored in the backend.  It can be stored as a news
>spool file, in a relational database backend or flat files.
>
>More importantly, it does more to describe the data in the article.  A
>couple of examples:
>
>Additionally, this system allows your current system of storage to
>remain intact.  I personally use a mysql database for storing articles. 
>Since relational databases tend to put very strict requirements on data,
>generating XML from them is cake.

Can you elaborate on this? Exactly where are you proposing we use XML?

Also, can you point me to some good URLs that explain xml, given that I
already grok html and sgml?

Thanks,
--Roger