Re: Allow backend to output result sets in XML

Greg Stark wrote:

>Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
>
>
>
>>Brian Moore <brianmooreca(at)yahoo(dot)com> writes:
>>
>>
>>>i would like to begin work on the TODO item
>>> Allow backend to output result sets in XML
>>>
>>>
>>I am not sure why it's phrased that way --- surely the code to hack on
>>is the client side, not the backend. Otherwise you need a protocol
>>revision to make this happen, which implies hacking *both* ends.
>>
>>
>
>Presumably libpq would continue to use the binary protocol, but other clients
>could bypass libpq and just stream ascii xml queries.
>
>
I would think that you would still use libpq with the binary protocol
that understood an xml header request
of some sort??

J

>Personally I don't see any point in xml, but if there was a standard query
>protocol then a client could send queries to any database that supported it
>without using any libraries. That might be useful. Of course you could do that
>without xml, but people seem to get more excited about complying with
>standards when they invoke xml.
>
>
>
>>psql already has some code to output results as HTML tables; I'd think
>>adding functionality in that vicinity would be the way to go.
>>
>>
>
>That could also be useful, mainly in that it could include the data from the
>query, as well as some meta data. Allowing import tools for programs like
>spreadsheets to do more intelligent things with the data than currently.
>
>
>

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