Glenn is using a setup a little different than what I had in mind.
I have not been able to find what I wanted online anywhere (though I have found numerous others looking for the same thing), so I have started playing with my own schema. Personnaly, I have no formal database training/education and only have a little over a years worth of experience playing around with databases, so my database designs are failry simple and do not make use of any advanced concepts (mostly because I do not know what the advanced concepts are).
What I have come up with so far works for me...the basic idea is that I want to store the same information that would be available in a schema dump from a database (the design, not the contents) along with a little extra information such as the database DSN...
A small database amounts to:
<database name="sample">
<!-- could store hostname instead and 'figure out' the dsn -->
<parameter name="dsn" value="postgresql://localhost/sample"/>
<parameter name="description" value="Store the name and favorite color of some people"/>
<object type="table" name="some_data">
<column name="Id" sqltype="integer">
<parameter name="primary_key" value="true"/>
<!-- don't show this when rendering this table (sloppy way to do this) -->
<parameter name="visible" value="false"/>
</column>
<column name="FirstName" sqltype="varchar" alias="First Name"/>
<column name="LastName" sqltype="varchar" alias="First Name"/>
<column name="FavoriteColorId" sqltype="integer">
<paramater name="link" value="colors.Id"/>
</column>
</object>
<object type="table" name="colors">
<column name="Id" sqltype="integer">
<parameter name="primary_key" value="true"/>
<parameter name="visible" value="false"/>
</column>
<column name="Color" sqltype="varchar"/>
</object>
</database>
.....once I figure out how to get esql to work right, I'll have a xsl document that can parse a larger version of the above into seperate views for each table and proper linking between related tables (through the 'link' parameter...what I guess is a relation). A little later this week I'm going to look into PostgreSQL 'views' and see about adding in some <object type="view"....> tags, and as I may need them in the database, some <object type="function"..> tags....(though I'm not sure how I could describe a function in a manner that would be useful to a xslt that has not been customized for a specific database)...
Anyways...someone who has taken "RDBMS's 101" could likely do much better with something like this.....but the above sample is the sort of thing I was looking for...and what I have come up with works for the databases I am currently working with.....and since I have to build web interfaces to 6 or so databases, using a XML setup like this is very helpful when working with Cocoon...for me anyways...
-Tom
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Derek Hohls [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>
> Glenn
>
> I would definitely be interested in this - tho' I am not sure that I
> fully understand the approach you have taken eg. " submit
> queries using that format"?
>
> I am also curious as to how you format your output to make it
> human-readable if you do not use XSLT?
>
> Cheers
> Derek
>
> >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 18/03/2002 05:38:08 >>>
> I have been working on a similar problem but approaching it in a
> slightly different way. I have taken more of an object-relational
> mapping approach similar to products such as TopLink. Using this
> approach you define your database schema and your XML result schema
> separately and then map them together. For instance, the SQL tables
> for
> Employees (i.e. Employee, Department, Person) will be mapped directly
> to
> your resulting XML document and that document can be structured like:
> <department>
> <name>accounting</name>
> <employee>
> <firstName>John</firstName>
> <lastName>Doe</lastName>
> <employeeId>1234</employeeId>
> </employee>
> <employee>
> .
> </employee>
> </department>
>
> or it could be structured like:
> <employee deptName="accounting" id="1234">
> <firstName>John</firstName>
> <lastName>Doe</lastName>
> </employee>
>
> or any other variation.
>
> The mapping (created against a defined mapping schema as an XML
> document) provides the information that is needed to build the queries
> and create the resulting documents. XSLT is not used and the typical
> result type from an XML query (<table name="department"><row><column
> name="deptId">360</column>.</row>.</table><table>.</table>) is not
> used.
> The query is truly symmetric. You can define the result format, submit
> queries using that format, and receive responses in that format. To
> qualify your query you include the known data elements and the query
> will be built to find those.
>
> I have been working on this independently and would be interested in
> comments. I currently have the query definition, submit, and response
> working for moderately complex data sets (involving many-to-many
> relations that can be brought to multiple places in the XML document)
> and will work on defining insert and update as well.
>
> - Glenn
>
>
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