pathurun
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Storing a tree of objects in a column as a string or binary form.
I am wondering which is a better way of storing a tree of objects in DB.
I have requirement like this
and i have 2 options
1. convert the tree into xml and store it as a string or
2. Serialize it and store it in binary form.
Anny suggestions please.
Thanks.
I have requirement like this
and i have 2 options
1. convert the tree into xml and store it as a string or
2. Serialize it and store it in binary form.
Anny suggestions please.
Thanks.
It depends on what you are trying to do. binary storage will be much smaller, but unreadable outside of your program. You will be able to read XML outside of your program, and, in general, I would recommend using XML unless there is a reason not to.
Another option is to store it in a table with the following schema:
ID | Parent ID | Data
0 | null | root data
1 | 0 | first child data
2 | 0 | second child data
ID | Parent ID | Data
0 | null | root data
1 | 0 | first child data
2 | 0 | second child data
I agree with Jigit. It's always best IMO to store data in a database so that it could be read in by other applications and sources and understood and serialization in binary would take that away from you. Ofcourse with XML serialization this is somewhat true also because some of the state information is going to be stored as nested garbeled text in the XML. I would just create a method for saving data and retreiving data and saving it in the format Jigit shows.
-- Jerry
-- Jerry
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http://www.topxml.com/xmlserializer/serializer.PDF