How would PHP4 handle an XML file stored in a database record as a blob?

jtp51

Would the returned blob, holding the XML file be handled as a String? I am in the prelimiary stages of working on a problem and as of right now, we would need to handle/store some data in XML and keep that XML file with the database record.

I know, I know... there are better ways to do this, but right now for our solution we would need to keep 'attributes' of a business entity in XML format for several reasons. But, we need to keep the 'attributes' XML file with the business entity's record in the database.

I had suggested adding an ID as one of the attributes of a node in the XML file and linking the record with the assigned ID in the XML file to an ID in the record. Turns out that we don't want to keep the two seperated. Reason being that when we get the record we want to get the XML file at the same time.

Programming Details:
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PHP 4.3.8
Oracle 9i
PHP's OCI8 Functions
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Plus, any suggestions from past experience or insight if you had worked on a similar problem would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for reading this post.

AstroTeg

What database manipulations do you plan to do with the XML once its in a blob? Its not that easy to search on so that doesn't make sense. If all you plan to do is use the database as storage, I'd HIGHLY recommend dumping the XML to a file. Then in your table, you store the file name. Let the database do what its good at doing and the file system good at what its good at doing.

Another approach would be toss the XML data in its own table, minus the XML language. Make sense? XML usually just describes data. So build a table to hold this data and add some code to generate the XML on the fly. The benefit is you can now query this data really really easily. If this isn't what you want, then the file system approach would be the way to go then.

Just my opinion. I don't know your project background and what limitations you're working with though...

jtp51

AstroTeg: We are definitely on the same page with this one.

I made the mistake in my previous post and I forgot to mention the reason this approach is being looked at is the database is on a different server that we won't have file access to either.

The 'correct' way to do this in my mind is put the data in the database tables and build a WebService to get and set the data.

Your suggestions to keep the XML in the file, I have been fighting for and we won't need to search on the data.

The only reason I asked the original question was in case we actually moved that direction.

Thank you for the feedback, it was greatly appreciated.