Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of dotnet22
dotnet22

asked on

storing Hierarchical data in an xml file instead of the database...

For a project, the data needs to be sotred in a Hierarchical fashion. I've been reading articles on it and everyone seems to save it in the database. I wanted to know is there a problem with saving the data as an xml file and just updating this file rather than the database? Does anyone see any potenial problems with this?
Avatar of lengreen
lengreen

Hi dotnet22,

It Depends on the size of your data, you would not want to store many rows ()  in XML as searching and sorting would be very inefficient

Cheers!
There has got to be a good reason why everyone uses databases. Databases use time-tested techniques and affords efficiencies when dealing with large data. Xml is best used as a delivery mechanism between disparate, heterogeneous environments. It is useful for describing small data sets, but is not a good choice as a storage mechanism (unless it is temporary). You can use Xml to store data if you purchase Tamino Server from Software AG but it is very pricey.

I'd recommend against it if you can gain access and usage to databases. Dont re-invent the wheel.
Avatar of dotnet22

ASKER

But this is a dynamic tree structure... I'm not quite sure how to handle this in the database... Setting up the parent/child relationships
This is what I don't understand: How to store the hierrchical data in the database, then take this data and display it in a treeview and allow the user to dynamically create a new node and then setting up this relationship in the database...
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of b1xml2
b1xml2
Flag of Australia image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial