I must have missed the beginning of this discussion; sorry. Could you remind me of the problem?
The question was "How can I configure the embed driver?"
In the XMLRPC driver, the system.xml configuration file is loaded by the XindiceServlet and this config file is defined in the web.xml file. Clean solution, nothing to say.
For the embed driver however things are a little bit different. Both the client- and server-side codes are located into the same classes: so in order to configure the server and be able to read from the database, the system.xml file must be passed to the client. Somehow. Still following me? :-)
For the record, the XMLTools (the client side) requires a configuration file on the CLI if you are using the embed driver.
Currently the XMLTools passes the location of the config file via a System.setProperty() function call. The constructor of the embed driver calls System.getProperty() and reads the file. Personally I find this an ugly hack (since I've implemented this I'm entitled to say so :-) ).
The org.xmldb.base.api.Database has a method 'setProperty' and I propose to use it instead. This would require to: - modify the embed driver to handle the configuration when passed via the setProperty method - modify the XMLTools class to read the content of the configuration file (-d flag) and pass it to the created Database object. - modify the o.a.x.c.xmldb.DatabaseImpl to store the configuration and pass it to the new driver object.
I've already implemented the solution and it works perfectly.
Gianugo things the the XMLDB:API client should be like a JDBC driver, where everything is passed via the URI. There are several differences between the JDBC and XMLDB APIs:
- the JDBC client first make a connection with the server where the
configuration is passed: this step is "missing" in the XMLDB API
- AFAIK JDBC doesn't allow you to define how the connection is made.
You don't have JDBC-WebDAV, JDBC-XMLRPC, JDBC-JMS: it's up to you to
create your client/server implementation to provide such services
- if you define an Excel file as your source, you will have to define
its locateion when you register your ODBC datasource. Of course you
could include this in the connection String but I don't see the solution
jdbc:odbc:excel:c::\my%20Documents\my%20sources\my%20documents.xsl:username:password
(or something like this), as something very practicable.
I don't ask for a new method, a new interface nor a new class: I just ask that we use the capabilities of the XMLDB:API. If some think that the Database.setProperty method is not adequate, they should contact the XMLDB:API guys or write another API (APAIK Xindice is not restricted to the XMLDB:API). But if we support this API I don't see any reason to bypass a documented method with an ugly hack.
-Vladimir
-- Vladimir R. Bossicard Apache Xindice - http://xml.apache.org/xindice
