[Tm4j-developers] Allow XML in resourceData

[Stefan L. <li...@no...>]

Hi there,

I get the Feature Request eMail from Kal, in which he proposed to allow 
XML Data in the resourceData Element.
As far as i know this will also be allowed in the next XTM standard.

I have some discussion points for you:
XTM is metadata for some real data, maybe in an occurrence or directly 
in resourceData. So it is not enough for a TopicMap engine to just 
handle/index/query the Metadata. I think it should also be possible to 
query the "real Data" inside the resourceData Element.
Since we are working with XML and we allow XML-Tags in resourceData, 
than querys can be done via XPath or XQuery.
You all are pinned to the relational or OO Backend for a TopicMap 
Engine, so querying by XPath or doing XQuery on Gigabytes of TopicMaps 
should be very difficult to implement.

I want to open discussion about a native XML Backend for a TopicMap 
engine, like i did with XTM4XMLDB (also @sf.net). I know my 
implementation of TMAPI with a native XML:DB Backend is really a quick 
hack, but i think it is worth to think about.
Currently with eXist (also @sf.net) as Backend, i don't have to create 
indexes for all the TopicMapFields like basename and so on, cause the 
XMLDB is indexing the whole DOM. If you want something quick out of 
Gigabytes of TopicMaps XPath is doing the work in milliseconds. You can 
query for something inside xtm namespace or just inside the resourceData 
without any problems.

I hope i can start a friendly discussion, and i hope murray will not be 
angry with me cause i said something about putting xml-tags inside 
resourceData :-)

Stefan