XML integration [was]Re: Can Rev be used as server database?

[Mark Brownell]

On Saturday, July 12, 2003, at 01:11  PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Mark Brownell wrote:
>
>> With regard to XML ... It is cool to have an XML parser in Rev.  But 
>> the
>> potential is vast, and I hope to see some sign that Runrev have a 
>> strategic
>> direction with this.  For example, it would be nice for them to 
>> integrate
>> version control from within  Rev.  This surely must be of use to 
>> _all_ Rev
>> developers.  And since CVS seems to be coming the standard and is 
>> open source,
>> I see no reason why something like Geoff's XML stack couldn't be fully
>> integrated into Rev along with a CVS module.  That way one could just 
>> convert
>> a stack into human readable XML, store it in the CVS repository, and 
>> reconvert
>> it back into a stack.
>
> Why do you need to read an XML version of a stack?

I don't. I didn't need it when I was learning how fun Realbasic 3.0 
was. I thought it was cute and interesting and I didn't give a darn. 
Come to think of it, Realbasic puts out so many upgrade releaces that 
it might be the only way to deal with the propblem. I don't know...

>
>> Furthermore, we could perform diffs on this so that we
>> could see what had changed between two versions, etc.  Even if Runrev 
>> do not
>> want the hassle of integrating with CVS, it would be beneficial if 
>> stacks
>> could actually be emitted as XML to the filesystem so they could be 
>> diffed.
>
> Couldn't you diff the binaries?

What's the diff? Why don't you ask Bernard, he wrote it.   :-)

>
> One use for stack-to-XML-and-back conversion that interested me a 
> while back
> was to be able to post simple stack definitions to the discussion list 
> so
> folks could run object-dependent code examples without having to create
> objects manually.

Good idea.

>
> While it's not much harder to make a more complete XML conversion 
> tool, it
> is much more tedious.
>
> Am I the only one with an interest in this sort of stack-XML usage, or 
> is
> that where you were headed with the human-readability above?

Bernard is, and I'm getting interested now. For human-readability I use 
MTML and PNLP because long ago I wanted human-readability and SGML says 
that would be a no-no. So for me I use a text based pull-parser and a 
tagging system that is easy to read.

Mark

>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World Media Corporation
>  Developer of WebMerge 2.2: Publish any database on any site