> > Sorry, but I don't think XML really is a data store, despite people's
> > attempts to bend it into one. It is a data structure convention intended
> > for the basis of exchanging data between systems.
>
> It's still a datastore, albiet it should be a temporary one.
Its no more a datastore than a TCP/IP packet or a text file, but I can see
where you are comming from
> Where I think
> XML is important, is where you need to exchange information, where the
> format is part of the data. For example I spent a year writing banking
> interfaces for a payroll timeclock system.
[SNIP]
A (real) example that I have been envolved in, was a finantial system that
received Tax rate information for a number of different sources. The info
contained the same data, just in a different order, with different 'field
names', but all of it was XML. What the system did was just throw the XML
document at an (Oracle) stored procedure, and the the document was parsed
within the procedure and the data put in the appropriate tables. No one
could argue that this could have easily have been done in a separate app, and
the data inserted 'normally' into the database, but in this case, by doing it
'in the database', was simpler, and there was less 'external' to maintain.
> That still leaves the question though, how is a database engine supposed to
> deal with it?
By exposing a DOM/SAX parser for use in PSQL code.
Phil
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