NYCPHP Meetup

[ali mohammad]

Hi,

While I have not had the opportunity to listen in person to this great
talk about XML database, I did have the good fortune of going through
the slides after somebody recently posted the online links for the
slides. 

At the risk of slightly sounding off topic (but it does base on
Kenneth's question on specific examples), I would like anybody's views
on the applicability of XML database to clinical databases where the
information that needs to be stored comes from a domain that is largely
undefined or unpredictable in advance (maybe the more precise term is
unstructured data but I am not too sure as I am amateur programmer
myself). I did have in the past developed clinical databases (data
captured from clinical trials) using the EAV model out of relational
tables. The queries turned out to be terribly slow so I was forced to
used a combination of true relational tables and EAV tables out of
hacked up relational tables. Even then, the performance levels sucked. 

I would appreciate it if you can throw light on what would be ideal
alternatives (instead of just relational databases) to storing such
disparate information items. Can object oriented database such as the
commercial Cache be a solution? Or XML databases perhaps?

Thanks in advance,
Ali Mohammed.

-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org]
On Behalf Of Kenneth Downs
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 9:17 AM
To: NYPHP Talk
Subject: [nycphp-talk] Some comments on the XML Talk

Rusty et al,

I had a great time at the XML database talk, it was very informative.  I

have a few comments, questions, and suggestions.

First, I think after seeing the talk that I would have liked in the 
beginning to get a more complete description of the problem domain that 
XML databases are trying to solve.  Specific examples here would be very

productive.  We know that publishing looms large here, what are some 
specific issues?  This would have made the code example more meaningful 
to me.

Second, there were ideas that came out during Q & A that might be 
expanded on to good purpose.  Things that we might not know or take for 
granted, like the philosophy regarding types and structures.  The 
audience seemed to be focusing on the need for structure, while the tool

did not seem to want to do that.  A couple of slides outlined the 
philosophy of types and structures might have been useful here.

Finally, I would have liked to hear more of Rusty's ideas about the 
relationship between the file system, the web server, and the database.

Rusty, do you want to expand on that here?

-- 
Kenneth Downs
Secure Data Software, Inc.
www.secdat.com    www.andromeda-project.org
631-689-7200   Fax: 631-689-0527
cell: 631-379-0010

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