some ways for storing the states, transitions and any hierarchical structure

[Nestor Urquiza]

I have to decide for my project if it is worth it to store some of my objects directly in mysql using iBATIS.

The usecase is just a web application accepting HTTP GET/POST requests and depending on given states it executes some code and move the client to a new state (I am using commons-scxml [1] for this). Moving from a starting state to an ending state the application pass several internal states and I need to store the whole history in a table.

I could use mysql 5 UpdateXML() extractValue() UDF functions to store/retrieve the hierarchical data but as an alternative I think storing objects directly is a perfect approach. In fact I think ORM is a pretty cool alternative to native xml storage.

The real problem arrives when Reporting guys want to query the mysql database for the states  I have stored using iBATIS. I am wondering if anyone knows about a way of using just plain SQL from a mysql client to query data that is stored using iBATIS. I understand this could be done using an UDF (User Defined Function).

Any thoughts? Whatever idea you might have could help a lot my storage options/decision.

Thanks a lot!,
Nestor Urquiza

[1] http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/scxml/