[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Describing hierarchies with XML
On Wednesday 03 November 2004 10:51, Burak Emir wrote: > Frans Englich wrote: > >Let's say that for each file(in a directory hierarchy) we have an XML > > document representing it, and it should specify the file's location in > > the hierarchy, such that one can find out where it is located by only > > inspecting the XML document for the file. Would this be appropriate? > > <snip/> > > >starting point..) -- would it then still be best to go XML instead of > > simply having the whole path in a string? Yes, I doubt, because it seems > > massively slow and I have never seen anyone do it which makes it feel > > like trying to innovate(or I'm simply failing to realize the power of > > XML?). > > > >The actual purpose is reports from a regression framework, which tell in > > what file a certain test failed, and then the user is supposed to be able > > to do queries similar to "show failures of text X in directory foo" and > > then the reports which are generated by test X, and are in directory foo, > > are returned. > > Data (like a path) should always be represented in a form that allows to > easily do what one wants to do with it. > > If somewhere in your regression test framework, you need to make a > system call, you will need a string representation. > > If that is the *only* thing for what you need the path (anticipating all > future extensions things of your program), then I don't see why you > would want to map the tree structure in your XML document. > > On the other hand, if you have some other use for the path (which would > need parsing the string), it might be nice to parse it once and for all, > and convert it back to string just for the system calls from above. In this particular case a possibility could be to have both an element representation, and the path in an attribute, for example. Since a central use is selecting the fileS on the basis of an individual directory or directory-series its path is part of, that means an element representation is of interest, AFAICT. But otoh, if they all have absolute paths, then an XSLT could simply do starts-with or contains, to get the node-set, but perhaps that leads to ordinary escaping issues, and nevertheless is restraining(perhaps the performance differences are ignorable). Cheers, Frans
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