02 November 2006

"XML, SQL, and C" by Jim Kent

Jim Kent the author of the BLAT algorithm has published an article in "Dr Dobb's Journal" (I guess you cannot find this via pubmed :-) ! ): XML, SQL, and C Tools for mapping between C and XML data structures, among other tasks. XML is an increasingly popular format for exchanging data. It handles optional fields and hierarchical data structures well, is readable by humans as well as computers, is portable across a wide variety of platforms, and it can even handle recursive data structures. In my own field of bioinformatics, XML has become almost as common as the venerable tab-separated file for exchanging information between databases. Still, integrating data from XML sources into our relational databases and our largely C code base sometimes seemed to involve more work than it should. Consequently, I was motivated to write the four tools—autoXml, AutoDtd, sqlToXml, and xmlToSql—presented in this article.

Pierre

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