On April 16, 2003 11:46 am, Jim Starkey wrote:

> At 05:18 PM 4/16/03 +0200, Martijn Tonies wrote:
> > > > 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.
> >
> >Perhaps by a "built-in" external function (udf library) that's
> >always available? Just like "ibudf"?
>
> There seems broad consensus that XML is general, cross platform, and cross
> industry segment. It has not been discussed, but I am prepared to argue
> that the server overhead to generate or deconstruct XML is less than the
> cost of shipping the data in out or into the server to perform the
> operations on the client.

<snip>

> Java, which can support
> a civilized library of functions. Embedding a JVM into Firebird is an
> ideal I've
> been pushing for years, but so far, no takers. That said, however, it must
> also
> be recognized that the horrible performance of Java string handling would
> almost
> certainly cancel any performance gain by not slopping the data around the
> network.
> A third suggestion, blob filters, is a non-starter due to limitations of
> the blob filter
> interface.

Why Java, why not TCL, it's a decent scripting language, designed
specifically to be built into other programs, and likely has better string
handling. We should be able to add in enough database stuff to make it work.