[Exist-open] "Beginner" user access, ramp up and documentation, thoughts and feelings

[<de...@in...>]

 Hello all

 First, thanks for providing such a great realization from the open 
 source community.
 eXist-DB seem to me to be an undiscovered gem  :)

 Since I am new to practical XML databases and eXist-DB in particular 
 allow me to recount my experiences and trouble to get a good feeling of 
 the inner logic and suitability to my purpose of the database.

 I may be wrong but I think there is two main uses for such a tool :

 A] a complete "web" development stack where everything is XML from data 
 to logic to user interface, think couchDB (and NOSQL like) minus 
 replication ten years before the rage :)

 B] a powerful XML database with rich XML queries capabilities

 'I' need B], the website and surrounding community seems to be geared 
 toward A] :), correct me if I am wrong ;)

 The only thing is, I suspect most people would be first interested in 
 B], need to get to grip with lots of XML concepts and produce some 
 "structured AND battle tested" content before eventually moving to A] :)
 (I personally don't think writing code in XML syntax is efficient or 
 pleasurable and it raises dozens of questions about version control, 
 tooling and such but that is another debate)

 A potential consequence of this, but a factual problem for me was that 
 I could not find "useful" documentation and I am still puzzled by 
 eXist-DB logic and "good use practice" more upon that a bit later.

 For instance the "getting started" is very useful but does not go 
 beyond "starting" the DB.
 After that the "article link" refer to a resource that is supposedly 
 bundled with eXist-DB but is not working 
 (http://demo.exist-db.org/exist/articles) and the documentation browser 
 is broken.
 It may be in those resources that I would have found more "intermediate 
 to advanced" material but right now I have few things available after 
 "getting-started" and before the technical API documentation or tips and 
 tricks.


 Here are the kind of questions that are "blocking me" and seems to me a 
 logical progression :

 - what is a library : i.e. is it a partition of the documents, simply 
 an index feature or something that is meta information that I can use to 
 organize and retrieve my documents :
 Is it a purely technical feature or an organizational tool (I hope the 
 later I guess the former) ?.

 - eXist-DB seems to have a "flat" document namespace and it seems so 
 strange to me that I guess I am wrong but I don't know ... :
 If I use eXide or eulcore.existdb (a python XML-RPC wrapper to access 
 eXist) to query  "//SPEECH/*" eXist happily answer me with all elements 
 in all documents everywhere in the database regardless of collections , 
 luckily only documents in the Shakespeare\plays collection happpen to 
 have such an element .
 Is that what really happens ? Because as soon as I let the "mondial" 
 collection inside my database and then load up a bunch of XML "invoices" 
 for instance, a query like "//country" will surely bring strange and 
 mixed results in :) (it is highly probably that I wanted to query the 
 <country> elements from the addresses in my invoice collection but I 
 then also got the <country> top level elements of the mondial collection 
 of document.
 I could of course use XML name-spaces to differentiate the two but in 
 that case, even supposing I have control on the invoice XML format and 
 schema (not a given) I don't have control on the mondial collection of 
 documents (or she Shakespeare one and so on and so on)

 So what is eXist-DB strategy to be able to manage collection and query 
 one collection or another an such ?


 - what is the status of documents inside eXist-DB ? are they first 
 class citizen and second level organizational tools, or just "happen to 
 be wrapper for a bunch of elements" ?
 For instance I evaluate eXist-DB to be the back end of the multi-part 
 collaborative document creation tool : several people create **parts** 
 or a bigger document that must conform to a schema (the parts and the 
 global one), the global one is at the same time partly a real document 
 with some proper content and metadatas, and at the same time partly a 
 container of the other documents (it references them and is displayed 
 and edited like it aggregates the parts seamlessly)
 So the "parts" document and the "whole/global" documents all exists in 
 the database.
 Is eXist-DB aware of that and does its API allow me to access documents 
 individually ? Or am I supposed to map them through DNS and URLs 
 (meaning it is not portable, transferable, relative linkable and 
 testable in isolation) to give them identity.

 Writing this I realize that both questions ends up to some common 
 implication : can the collection and document name be used to "extent" 
 the root path  in some way ;)  : 
 /collection/documentname/ROOT_ELEMENT/...

 -  What is a "mod" ? ;)

 - and a few more ;)




 Thanks a lot for your time and sorry for the probably dumb question :)


 PS: while I am at it, there is a very small error in the window startup 
 script, at least the one from SVN :
 line 46 : set BATCH.D="%EXIST_HOME%\bin\batch.d" is illegal having a 
 dot in the BATCH.D name cause trouble. BATCHD is fine though ;)
 Patch :
 Index: startup.bat
 ===================================================================
 --- startup.bat	(révision 14663)
 +++ startup.bat	(copie de travail)
 @@ -43,9 +43,9 @@
  set JAVA_ENDORSED_DIRS="%EXIST_HOME%"\lib\endorsed
  set JAVA_OPTS="-Xms128m -Xmx512m -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 
 -Djava.endorsed.dirs=%JAVA_ENDORSED_DIRS%"
 
 -set BATCH.D="%EXIST_HOME%\bin\batch.d"
 -call %BATCH.D%\get_opts.bat %*
 -call %BATCH.D%\check_jmx_status.bat
 +set BATCHD="%EXIST_HOME%\bin\batch.d"
 +call %BATCHD%\get_opts.bat %*
 +call %BATCHD%\check_jmx_status.bat
 
  "%JAVA_HOME%\bin\java" "%JAVA_OPTS%"  -Dexist.home="%EXIST_HOME%" -jar 
 "%EXIST_HOME%\start.jar" jetty %JAVA_ARGS%
  :eof