On 11/7/06, Matt Quackenbush <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Josh, > > I think the point that Rob and others were making is that your data should > be validated and cleaned up BEFORE being inserted into the database - > whether it's inserted as XML or not is completely and utterly irrelevant.
That's not exactly what I was saying, but I do agree that it's a good practice when possible. On the whole, though, I'm a proponent of less rather than more restriction on what can be entered. Some data is restrictive by its very nature (e.g. price, quantity, etc.), but other data is very unstructured (e.g. name, title, description). In the latter case, I prefer to try to keep it as it was entered and then handle it when it's used - preferably without modification. > If you didn't have invalid data in the database, then you wouldn't have > invalid data in your XML. But, since the data obviously is NOT being > validated and cleaned up before db entry, the best, most scalable, and most > widely accepted "good practice" would be to use CDATA in your XML. Exactly. Any number of characters can creep into that unstructured text I mentioned above. A LOT of them if the text is copied and pasted from MSWord. Those characters can either be stripped one-by-one using REReplace() or another similar method or you can simply allow them in your XML by enclosing them in a CDATA block. The latter is much easier and retains the data exactly as it was entered. > Again though, what you're doing is just a bandaid that covers up the real > issue, which is invalid data being entered into the database. In Josh's case, I don't think I have a good sense of what kind of data he's got nor of the process in which he's using it so the best I could do was throw out generic options. Hopefully they made enough sense that he'll be able to use them if he feels the need to do so. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Introducing the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. 80 pages of hard-hitting, up-to-date ColdFusion information by your peers, delivered to your door four times a year. http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:259535 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
