RE: [Bug-gnupedia] Storage and display

[Peteris Paikens]

> It is just plain obvious that you would use a
> database. You could put all your XML formatting IN the
> database if you wanted. You can have all the fields
> you want, you can have all the formatting you want.
> And a database will be much faster.

How do you want to put the XML formatting in database? by storing the whole
XML files in the database? 
I am not sure about the speed benefit, it might well be the other way round.

  Can anybody test the speed of getting the text of a single file by it's ID
(the most used operation that gnupedia will probably have) from mysql and
the filesystem, in an environment of, say, 100,000 articles ?

>In terms of display, the one thing I have against XML
>is compatibility... you should display it all in the
>end as pure normal HTML. It has all the formatting
>we'll need. For instance, I tried to look at a page
>using XML earlier in Netscape 4.6 and it wouldn't work
>at all!

  The compatibility is that all HTML files are valid XML files, not vice
versa. The benefit is that new tags with new information can be added
without changing applications that use the data. The old apps will just use
the info they need and the new apps can take advantage of additional tags,
and still work on the same set of files.