View Single Post
Old Nov 20th, 2005, 11:30 PM   #5
Dameon
Troll
 
Dameon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Texas
Posts: 732
Rep Power: 4 Dameon is on a distinguished road
XML has great application in a) data transmission and b) fairly constant storage.

RSS falls into A because it is used to transfer a set of info from another data source to any of a huge number of clients. Could be firefox, could be an aggregator.

GAIM (an instant messenger) stores its preferences in an XML file. This falls into B because the file is only accessed periodically to load it on startup and even less frequently to be rewritten when preferences change.

The issue with using XML as a database replacement is server-side overhead and a lot of file locking. Databases are optimized for concurrent access and storage. Each has its use.
__________________
MD5(sig) = bcef75433db02e9ad9bf81d6f7c5c270
Dameon is offline   Reply With Quote