S
Spurry Moses
Hi,
I'm considering using a native XML database in conjunction with InfoPath -
such as dbXML or Xindice.
I'm actually wondering how many other people are doing this? And, if so,
how is it going? Or even whether anyone thinks it's a good idea?
Actually, it seems like a really obvious fit with InfoPath to me! ;-) I'm
quite keen to setup a test and give it a try.
My situation is that we have developed a prototype application that goes
to a great deal of trouble to map the XML from the InfoPath form back into
a relational database structure. Unfortunately, the data is not very
structured and is difficult to squash into this 'relational box'. So
difficult, infact, that the designers have come to the realisation that
they will require development of new web services when forms with certain
unusual data is created! Definitely a problem.
"XML database to the rescue!", I'm thinking. Why don't we just submit each
XML form (file) to a native XML database and leave it there as it is. From
there, we can write web services to access the data using XPath or XQuery
etc and access them from InfoPath in the same way we do now. Only that
this way, we simply avoid any SQL data 'squishing'. Presumably, from what
I can work out, the XML database will provide us with all the searching
power we need - assuming we design the schema correctly.
Even the 'lookup' tables can be put into an XML file? (I'm not sure about
this yet).
Our InfoPath forms, incidentally, consist of one huge form, which is built
of many 'modules' or parts. The user builds up the form from scratch by
appending several from a total of around several hundred modules. We also
have a huge, show-stopping performance problem with this, but I will
address this in another post (it takes 70 seconds to load a form with only
about 25 modules on it - and we've got 275 to go!)
We also are using SharePoint and wrote some basic Workflow that we needed.
It all looks good apart from the database and the performance.
Any opinions or experience on using a native XML database with InfoPath?
I'm considering using a native XML database in conjunction with InfoPath -
such as dbXML or Xindice.
I'm actually wondering how many other people are doing this? And, if so,
how is it going? Or even whether anyone thinks it's a good idea?
Actually, it seems like a really obvious fit with InfoPath to me! ;-) I'm
quite keen to setup a test and give it a try.
My situation is that we have developed a prototype application that goes
to a great deal of trouble to map the XML from the InfoPath form back into
a relational database structure. Unfortunately, the data is not very
structured and is difficult to squash into this 'relational box'. So
difficult, infact, that the designers have come to the realisation that
they will require development of new web services when forms with certain
unusual data is created! Definitely a problem.
"XML database to the rescue!", I'm thinking. Why don't we just submit each
XML form (file) to a native XML database and leave it there as it is. From
there, we can write web services to access the data using XPath or XQuery
etc and access them from InfoPath in the same way we do now. Only that
this way, we simply avoid any SQL data 'squishing'. Presumably, from what
I can work out, the XML database will provide us with all the searching
power we need - assuming we design the schema correctly.
Even the 'lookup' tables can be put into an XML file? (I'm not sure about
this yet).
Our InfoPath forms, incidentally, consist of one huge form, which is built
of many 'modules' or parts. The user builds up the form from scratch by
appending several from a total of around several hundred modules. We also
have a huge, show-stopping performance problem with this, but I will
address this in another post (it takes 70 seconds to load a form with only
about 25 modules on it - and we've got 275 to go!)
We also are using SharePoint and wrote some basic Workflow that we needed.
It all looks good apart from the database and the performance.
Any opinions or experience on using a native XML database with InfoPath?