incremental xml update over network ?

[marcus]

Hi <xml>Gurus</xml>

I've a scenario where the system configuration is maintained in the server as xml dom tree. clients can change the system config either entirely or in parts. when the client wishes to change it entirely, the new domtree would be sent to server. OTOH, if the client wishes to change only partial config, she would send the subtree xml that needs change. in the following scenario:

<system>
<subsys-0>
<config-0>text</config-0>
<config-1>text</config-1>
</subsys-0>
<subsys-1>
<config-0>text</config-0>
<config-1>text</config-1>
</subsys-1>
<system>

eg: client may change the whole <system> or just system/subsys-0/config-1

I'm not making any assumptions on the depth of the tree for partial config change. In either case, the server would like to do syntax validation as well as data type validation as much as possible in the domparser itself. how would i achieve this goal ?

do i need to comeup with individual dtd's for partial changes ? or is there a better way to handle this kind of situation ?

my initial thoughts were: client would specify the operation name which would identify the subtree. eg: client would send the request as part of text based protocol and specifies that the config change is to system/subsys-0/config-1 which would map to the dom sub tree. but this would not solve the validation problems.

if there is a keyword/technology to refer this situation in the xml world, please let me know. i'm not sure how SOAP would fit into this scenario ? i'm wiring the server, client and the text protocol..

the target platform is an embedded system and hence small footprint solution is very necessary.

I apprecate you thoughts/comments/links etc..

//marcus
PS: if this is not the right forum to discuss this, i apologize. and would appreciate pointers to right forum.

 

[Martin SChukrazy]

Umm there are two broad questions embedded in here
q1) How can i reconcile partial updates to an XML document? q2) Do i require DTD's for the individual updates?

Answer to the first part (Assuming that the worst case scenario of inserts or the best case scenario of updates) A) For the first part, you pretty much have to load the XML document in memory (SAX or DOM or whatever), parse the changes into memory too (Document Frament, Node whatever) and then update the changes to the main document in memory before writing it out.

B) If your configuration file is mapped to RDBMS (through SQL to RDBMS mapping) then you could technically make changes directly to sql (enforcing the relationships over there ) and then recreate the entire document back in your environment..

C) The third option is to use native XML databases (such as Progress's XIS or even the GNU one). In the case of progress XIS, you can send changes to a document through what is known as an update gram, which in your case would mean the document fragment for update.

The advantages of methods B and C are that they provide you ACID properties for your XML document. The advantage of C over B is that the database is XML native and hence there is no need for mapping back and forth..

Answer to the second part:
For document fragment updates (sub-tree) or of even smaller footprint updates (footprint refering to the document elements being updated) really depends on how much error checking you would like to do. If you want to maintain strict error checking, then yes it would be wise to come up with a DTD/Schema for the entire document and then another DTD / Schema for the updates. As far as the latter is concerned, depending on your configuration you could effectively define all such changes in one DTD (again depends on your individual situation).

Under the assumption that this is a single document that you multiple clients can change, you are better of looking at some persistence mechanism that provides you with the ACID properties..
Hope this helps..

 

[Martin SChukrazy]

my initial thoughts were: client would specify the operation name which The way to solve the validation problem is
1) To create a copy of the master config document, apply changes and check for validity.
2) To check validity of the update document based on DTD / Schema You could technically use a small footprint embedded XML store or a small footprint Embedded OODBMS which you could use to solve some of your problems. Its just getting the right oodbms which embeds the XML add-ons such as Xpath, XQuery etc to handle this.

 

[marcus]

Hi Martin, Thanks for your helpful reply

Umm there are two broad questions embedded in here
q1) How can i reconcile partial updates to an XML document? q2) Do i require DTD's for the individual updates?

[snip]

 

[Patrick TJ McPhee]

[Want to have updates involving either a complete document or a fragment of the document...]

% do i need to comeup with individual dtd's for partial changes ? or % is there a better way to handle this kind of situation ?

If the partial changes have the same structure as they would have in the full document, then you can use the same DTD for validation. The key is to specify the correct top-level element in the document type declaration. i.e.,

<!DOCTYPE system PUBLIC '-//MYORG//My update//EN'>

for a full update, or

<!DOCTYPE subsys-0 PUBLIC '-//MYORG//My update//EN'>

for a partial update.

I think schemas will work the same way, but you have to be careful to declare everything such that it can appear as the document element.