[REBOL] Re: data storage: object! vs. XML
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 23-Oct-2000 14:02
Hi, Ryan,
[rebol-bounce--rebol--com] wrote:
> I'm working on a news site management system and I can either save the data
> in text files as object! expressions or as XML.
>
> Which would be the better choice? I'm pretty new to this and I'm not quite
> sure what advantages I gain by saving the data as XML (esp. RSS grammar)
>
Flexibility. As a vendor-independent standard, XML provides a format that
you can use with a large variety of software and tools.
Readability. Although there is a bit of training involved, anyone who can
read HTML can learn to read XML very quickly. (More quickly than they can
learn to read REBOL objects, IMHO.)
Scalability. If at some later date you decide to store your data in a
database, it's likely to require less effort to get the data back out into
XML format than into REBOL objects. In fact, some database vendors are
getting quite noisy about their willingness to support XML.
> since the XML must be parsed into objects anyway.
>
Is this a requirement of your app?
I've done quite a bit of work using XML as the external data format, just
reading and parsing the XML and then using a library of functions/objects
to traverse the resulting block structure, without actually converting the
XML to objects.
-jn-
--
; Joel Neely [joel--neely--fedex--com] 901-263-4460 38017/HKA/9677
REBOL [] do [ do func [s] [ foreach [a b] s [prin b] ] sort/skip
do function [s] [t] [ t: "" foreach [a b] s [repend t [b a]] t ] {
| e s m!zauafBpcvekexEohthjJakwLrngohOqrlryRnsctdtiub} 2 ]
