Re: [phpesp-dev] phpesp future expandability (xml)

[Kon A. <ang...@ip...>]

Guys,

	It does seem logical that XML become the preferred media. I for one have no 
problem with changing over to XML and OO coding. I've had a look at the docs 
for Pear and being disciplined in coding standards is not a bad thing at all.  
I would also prefer that XML Schemas replace DTDs.
A few questions.
Are we all confortable in coding using OO-principles and XML?
How many developers would we 'lose' if this conversion takes place?
Where do we go from here?
What's our first step?

ps James could you please resend me the DTD and the sample XML/XSL.


Regards

Kon


On Mon, 5 Aug 2002 08:47, James E. Flemer wrote:
> A few days ago I was chatting with the IT Lab guys
> (greggmc, zorncj) about ways to make phpesp more flexible.
> As you may have noticed, people frequently request the
> ability to make forked (aka branching or conditional)
> surveys, where the response to one question chooses what
> additional questions are seen. In order to implement this
> feature, the database schema would have to be changed to
> hold more metadata. There have already been a few DB
> changes, but I would like to find some solution to keep
> this from continuing. Setting up the database seems to be
> one of the biggest problems for users (besides windows
> support). I propose that the survey storage model be
> changed to XML. With XML, future metadata changes can be
> easily accomplished by replacing the old DTD with a new
> one, a simple 'cvs up' could do this (rather than fiddling
> with mysql).
>
> My idea for this is to store surveys on the filesystem in
> XML, and when they are activated (or tested) the XML will
> be "compiled" (using xsl?) to php. This way the xml doesn't
> have to be transformed on each hit. Also by using XML
> internally, import/export of surveys will be trivial. I
> wrote up a DTD and some sample XML/XSL files a while
> ago[1]; they aren't complete but might give you an idea of
> where I was headed.
>
> I also would like to pear-ize as much of phpesp as
> possible. This means modularizing functionality, and
> switching to OO-style code. However, we can make use of the
> growing collection of existing Pear modules (like the Auth
> module, and the XML modules). Even if this change doesn't
> happen soon, I'd like developers to skim the Pear coding
> standards[2] and start trying to follow them for all new
> code.
>
> [1] http://phpesp.sf.net/xml/
> [2] http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php
>
> I'll be around on IRC if anyone would like to chat about
> this, or post your thoughts on the list.
>
> Thanks,
> -James
>
>
>
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