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Thanks for the clarifications guys! On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 12:29:03 -0400, "Jerome McDonough" <[log in to unmask]> said: <snip> > So, you can map MODS losslessly into an RDBMS, but if the > main point of the exercise is to make it easy to search, you shouldn't > bother; use an XML-base text retrieval engine. If that's *not* the main point, > and you're more concerned about data management, than an RDBMS may > be the way to go. <snip> > Given all of the above, and your description of your project, I'd > seriously consider just keeping the bibliographic data your storing as a series > of XML records in a single file. I explained this in a private follow-up to Rick, but am thinking I should probably do so here in case anyone might be interested. I have big plans that involve replacing BibTeX and the binary data and formatting files produced by commercial applications like Endnote with XML data files and XSLT formatting files. In others words, I want the power of XML and of MODS available not just to librarians and such, but to end users like me (a social scientist who does a fair bit of non-standard citing for academic articles and books), to college students, etc. The most evolved project (well, really the only one!) that deals with these needs using XML and XSLT is refdb: http://refdb.sourceforge.net It uses RDBMSs for storage, and currently supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. This itself offers some nice flexibility. It allows multi-user support in large organizations if they should need it, while also allowing for easy-to-use and administer embedded options as well. Because of the client-server design, it also in theory allows other projects to use refdb as their engine. At the moment, the Open Office project has a bibliographic subproject. That project is currently in the design stages, and one participant (who is now on this list) has been working on a data model for it. I have argued that he really needs to look at MODS, but we're a little unsure about how to go about supporting it (I myself know nothing about DB design). What I want to see is that project adopt refdb as its data storage and formatting engine. I also want to see the refdb data model and the xslt files that format these records enhanced to use MODS (Or something very close to MODS) records. Doing so will help create an open source foundation to significantly enhance bibliographic support for students and researchers. What you all are saying is that there are tradeoffs here. So which is the least painful choice (in terms of development work needed -- because there are very few contributers to these projects, me included, who can actually program -- but also features, and user experience)? I am confident MODS + XSLT is the solution to some real problems, but the question of data storage is still open. I do think it's important for whatever next-generation bib tools to be able to support a few thousand records gracefully, and to have an option for multi-user access at some point at least. So does your answer change given this? Or should we be looking at XML databases? I also read somewhere there are a few Java tools that simplify dealing with XML data in the context of RDBMSs, but I know nothing more. If anyone has any further advice (or wants to help in some other way), please keep it coming. Thanks, Bruce -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Sent 0.000002 seconds ago