Re: [school-discuss] Re: XML in Education

[Michael Hall <olc@ninti.com>]

On Mon, 8 Apr 2002, Bruno Vernier wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 11:23:59AM -0600, Les Richardson wrote:
>
> > >        c) Use a XML Format (EduML, EML) for all lesson plans
to allow
> > >      easy transformation of the data to any other format.
> >
>
> - Storing Data that is potentially going to be interchanged is
best done in
> some sort of XML (technically speaking)
>

I've been looking a little closer at XML lately (in the context of
PHP/Python/Perl), as there are certainly a lot of commentators
around
telling
us that "this is the way things are going". I think I have a
reasonable
grasp of the technical side of things, but ... I must be missing
something
... I cannot see how storing data in what seems to effectively be a
kind
of flat file is better or preferable to using a database. Maybe I
can't
see the wood for the trees? I know that the data in an XML file can
be
translated into pretty well any presentation format, but so can data
in a
database.

So, what insight or angle on XML am I missing?

Mick Hall