Brad Chapman wrote: > I've been looking at the shelve module and python and thought of a > way to do this hopefully rather quickly: > > 1. Convert the current storage ids (ie. > 'workspace1/workspace2/viewer1.xml') > into unique ids and store this mapping in a dictionary (random_id > -> current_id). > > 2. Shelve the xml according to their random ids. > > 3. Provide lots o' helper functions to make this work smoothly with > the current set up. > > What do you all think? Good idea? Bad idea? I don't know much about python's shelve module, but from what you describe it seems pretty obvious. It sounds to me like a good idea, but probably not as good as storing in a real DBMS (for sophisticated querying etc.). If you still want to use XDBM, once it has python bindings, then I suggest you implement XML storage in a fashion that will facilitate its storage in XDBM, and not worry too much right now about issues of security, elegance, sophistication, etc. That will come when we store our XML in a professionally designed DBMS. g. -- Gary Van Domselaar gary at bioinformatics.org http://www.bioinformatics.org/~gary ---------------------------------------------------- bioinformatics.org: The Open Lab http://www.bioinformatics.org/