XML gateways

[Robert A. (Bob) Morris]

They are not XML enabled. We wish they were since both are pretty
interesting databases.

Virtually all major relational dbms now output XML, if crude, and
there is not really much reason people shouldn't be doing so on some
agreed upon alternative http port, say 8883. It's not critical to wait
for an agreed upon uniform schema to serve XML. it's even possible to
infer a schema or DTD from data instances, and anyway a schema or DTD
is not necessary to do much of what XML is good for. We hope people
will pay more attention to getting out their "raw" data in XML and
publishing their /query/ interfaces so that applications can use
them. When we do something like our gateway, we have to put a lot of
time into reverse engineering the query syntax because so many sites
believe that the only use of their data is through the forms they
provide, or some import of their entire dataset by a prior
arrangement.

Bob


Jones, Tim (CMR, Hobart) writes:
 > Date:         Tue, 20 Mar 2001 15:29:55 +1100
 > From: "Jones, Tim (CMR, Hobart)" <tim.jones at MARINE.CSIRO.AU>
 > To: TDWG-SDD at usobi.org
 > Subject:      Re: XML gateways
 >
 > Nice work!!
 >
 > I am wondering though, if you are federating heterogenous XML databases why
 > do you need to scrape the returned HTML but instead operate on the XML or
 > are they not XML enabled?
 >
 > Tim Jones
 >
 > ---------------------------------------------------------
 > Database Manager
 > Centre for Research on Introduced Marine Pests
 > GPO Box 1538, Hobart Tas 7000, Australia.
 > Phone : (03) 62325222 (switch), (03) 62325213 (direct)
 > Mobile: 0411 560057
 > Fax   : (03) 62325485
 > E-mail: tim.jones at marine.csiro.au
 > ---------------------------------------------------------
 >
 >
 >
 >
 > > -----Original Message-----
 > > From: Robert A. (Bob) Morris [mailto:ram at CS.UMB.EDU]
 > > Sent: Tuesday, 20 March 2001 15:18
 > > To: TDWG-SDD at USOBI.ORG
 > > Subject: XML gateways
 > >
 > >
 > > Here's some candy: we've built simple sample gateways to the USDA
 > > Plants site and the Simthsonian Mammal Species of the World
 > > site. Server-side perl makes up cgi requests to the site, parses
 > > the returned html and emits XML. Of course, it is a very
 > > unstable solution since
 > > changes to the site's html will break it. But we did it because we
 > > experiment with federating heterogeneous XML biodiversity databases.
 > >
 > > You can nibble at
 > > http://www.cs.umb.edu/efg/xml/junwan/DEVELOP/gateway/gateway2.html
 > >
 > >
 > > Bob Morris
 > > Jun Wan
 > >
 >