XML Import

[Fairlight]

Confusious (Bill Campbell) say:
> I make no claims on being an XML expert, using it primarily with

Me either.  :)

> There are a fair number of xslt processors available, xsltproc,
> on Red Hat and CentOS systems for one.

Sablotron...

> XML can be looked upon as an object database, as opposed to a
> relational database, thus lending it to modelling real-world
> things fairly easily.  The issue becomes one of mapping from that
> object world to the tables of a relational database or file
> management system such as FilePro.

It's the relationships that become an issue.  As an object, we as people
have bodies.  Now if you're looking at "organs", are you looking at the
cardiovascular system, the sensory system, the digestive system...?  All
objects that are a subset of the object "body".  If you look at it from the
relational side, you end up asking, "What defines an organ?" and, "What
defines a related set of organs?"  There isn't an inherent clarity like
there is with looking at it as an object model.

The problem is that relational database linkage and object linkage don't
get along very well without a human brain sitting between the two models.

mark->
-- 
"I'm not subtle. I'm not pretty, and I'll piss off a lot of people along
the way. But I'll get the job done" --Captain Matthew Gideon, "Crusade"