On Monday, February 18, 2002, at 06:05 AM, Dawid Weiss wrote:
KS> What if it was something that was stupid simple like automatically KS> creating two collections, one for documents and one for metadata? Each
We have adopted such a 'stupid simple' approach. It works well. We'd rather
think of the approach as simple than stupid of course... Any term used, the
separation of metadata from the contents based on a prefixed subcollection
(prefix reserved) has several advantages over storing them inside
documents.
Yeah, sorry I just realized Krzysztof posted a description of that very thing right before I sent that mail. Heh, heh, see what I get for being too busy writing and not reading. So Kudos to you guys for not only coming up with it, but also implementing it.
KS> The metadata doc KS> would have database managed portions and user managed portions,
Amazing coincidence in thinking. It only proves the design is simple and
intuitive...
KS> The meta-data collection name would just have a reserved prefix/suffix and
KS> could be ignored in collection listings.
Exactly :)
KS> Maybe It could be an option so that if you don't want the overhead you
Exactly :)
KS> access the data like any other collection. It wouldn't even require any
KS> changes to the XML:DB APi if you layered on top.
Exactly. Amazing, I could have been an author of your e-mail...
KS> It's kind of hacky, but it's simple and in reality it might work decently
KS> well.
It does. We have such an API.
KS> I don't know, just a thought.
A very good one. Thanks, it to some extent proves we chose the right
approach to the problem we faced (i.e. lack of versioning/ metadata).
Dawid
Kimbro Staken XML Database Software, Consulting and Writing http://www.xmldatabases.org/
