Re: Allow backend to output result sets in XML

There is apparently a standard (or at least a draft) on using XML with 
SQL that can be seen here: http://www.wiscorp.com/sql/sql_2003_standard.zip

I have no idea if it is of great use - I found it a fairly opaque 
document to read. It's a pity that unlike the document on SQL/JRT they 
didn't provide a sample + tutorial appendix.

Oracle has a few examples here: 
http://otn.oracle.com/tech/xml/xmldb/htdocs/sql_xml_codeexamples.html

IBM has some research info here: 
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/414/reinwald.pdf

cheers

andrew

Merlin Moncure wrote:

>Greg Stark wrote:
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>>Personally I don't see any point in xml, but if there was a standard
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>query
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>>protocol then a client could send queries to any database that
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>supported
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>>it
>>without using any libraries. That might be useful. Of course you could
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>do
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>>that
>>without xml, but people seem to get more excited about complying with
>>standards when they invoke xml.
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>hm.  I have to deal with xml quite frequently because I do a lot of DX
>with the gov't and other entities that are rapidly standardizing on xml.
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>I like Oracle's approach to xml using object relational mappings to
>allow composition of documents server side based on natural data
>relationships.  The XML document becomes something like a specialized
>view.  It would save me tons of app-level coding if the server could do
>this for me.
>
>Since postgres is already fairly Oracle-ish in design, IMO this is
>definitely the way to go (XQuery = Insanity.).  A FE/BE protocol
>revision would be useful but not necessary...the XML doc could be
>returned as a scalar.
>
>Right now I think all xml processing is done in app-level code, because
>the server (due to limitations of sql) is usually unable to return data
>the way you want it...so simply adding xml output from psql would be
>fairly useless for most real tasks (if it wasn't, someone would have
>done it a long time ago).  Also, contrib\xml can already handle most of
>the simple things.
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