[Pipet Devel] Tools for parsing XML with Python

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Svanberg Liss wrote:
> 
> This confuses me a bit. Are you saying that you don't need a DB, or that you
> don't want to store the contents of the DB in a DB-specific manner?

We need a DB.  I'm just saying that the elements stored in the DB are really
separate files on a filesystem.  So, the DB would behave something like a file
manager or even a file system.

> ( I believe that you wan't to be able to send queries to the DB such as "
> give me all interfaces/objects/applications that can preform this operation
> upon this kind of data "?
> Isn't that a DB? )

Yes.  We want to be able to do that.  But I think our database should allow for
a query mechanism to be plugged in as a separate locus.  I alluded to this a
little earlier.  Here is how a query would be set up:

  DATABASE LOCUS -----> QUERY LOCUS -----> DATA LOCUS

> Hmm.
> There is a Gnome project called the Gnome-DB ( you didn't expect that name,
> did you? :)
> http://www.chez.com/rmoya/gnome-db/index.html
> 
> and it has got a DB-engine that uses raw files. I have not examined it yet (
> save that I have read their homepage ) so I don't know much about it, but it
> might be worth a look.

That should be worth looking into.

> If you pass around CORBA objects, that "represents" the actual file, you
> will not need to duplicate the file.
> ( GNOME::Stream is a very good candidate! :)

EXACTLY!

> In either case, passing around a file "reference", instead of reading
> directly from the file, seems to be the obvious solution.

YES! :-)


Cheers.
Jeff
-- 
                         +----------------------------+
                         |        J.W. Bizzaro        |
                         |  jeff at bioinformatics.org   |
                         |                            |
                         |        THE OPEN LAB        |
                         | Open Source Bioinformatics |
                         |                            |
                         | http://bioinformatics.org/ |
                         +----------------------------+