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Simplify Apps Using XML With PHP and DB2
An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks has an article from a little while back that takes a look at the impact of schema evolution on the application. The narrative walks the reader through a usage scenario to illustrate the ease of setting up a PHP environment and integrating DB2 native XML functionality with PHP applications including web services written in PHP and XQuery."
...they implemented "XML databases" by treating XML as BLOB's and adding XML parsing and updating capabilities to SQL. Hybrid indeed. I'd be rather tempted to call it a bastardization of both contepts (relational and XML).
The thought springs to mind that PHP, as it happens, would be uniquely suited to working with the hypotethical XML databases, due to it's rather particular concept of arrays. As many of us undoubtely know, a PHP array can be used to contain a tree of arbitrary shape and size, and with nodes of arbitrary types. A native, 1-on-1 match to an XML tree.
A couple of years ago I tried looking for a native XML database. The solutions were either very pricey, or very slow, or both. Nothing to keep up to RDBMS. The whole "XMLDBMS" hype died over eventually, as you may recall. OR hasn't it? Are such hybrid solutions all that's left of the concept? It was a great idea.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer