My immediate response is that Option 2 (rolling your own in code) is going to give you a useable result sooner - especially given the complications you have mentioned (multi-values in PERSON, which are translated individually to multi-valued fields in other files)
Option 1 may end up giving you a result, but I'd be afraid you would end up spending 5 times as long getting the dictionaries right vs.: rolling your own. Option 3 is going to have you writing code anyway, which may end up being MORE difficult as you will be stitching up information from "unstructured" (XML documents - unless you have a parser) sources. Ross Ferris Stamina Software Visage - an Evolution in Software Development [FOOTNOTE: It IS possible to have a "generic" utility to export XML representations of arbitrarily complex, related & multi-valued data, BUT you need to keep some additional metadata within your dictionaries to get the nested relationships "right" - or at least that is the way that we tackled it within Visage. Our XML generation routines aren't "language driven" though (ie: we don't have an "extension" to ACCESS/PERFORM) - they are "solution driven" - we know what fields we need because they have been dropped on a form/report/cube/whatever, and we can determine the appropriate XML structure using the metadata in our extended dictionaries. Perhaps you CAN achieve what you are after using the IBM/U2 XML processing capabilities, and I'll follow this thread with interest] >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner-u2- >[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Wendy Smoak >Sent: Friday, 14 January 2005 3:44 AM >To: [email protected] >Subject: [U2] Getting XML out of UniData > >I need to get an XML representation of a PERSON out of UniData. This >isn't a simple LIST statement out of PERSON, the data is in at least >half a dozen other files. Sometimes there are keys in PERSON to the >other files, sometimes the other file is just keyed the same as PERSON. > >I can see two extremes - very ugly I-Descriptors added to PERSON (which >already has over 3000 items, and I don't even know if it will work, >because some of the data in the other files is itself multivalued-- can >you have a phrase within a phrase?) or just opening and reading the >records, and writing out the XML myself from UniData. > >A third option which sits in the middle is what I've done before, a >combination of reading records FORMLISTing some select lists, then using >DOWNLOAD to create "sub-parts" of the XML document, which I then >concatenate in UniBasic. > >Any ideas appreciated! > >-- >Wendy Smoak >------- >u2-users mailing list >[email protected] >To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/ > > >-- >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. >Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.11 - Release Date: 12/01/2005 > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.11 - Release Date: 12/01/2005 ------- u2-users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
