It presents an XML view of a relational database which is defined by an XML schema.
This application serves XML constructed from a relational database as defined by an XML schema blueprint.
That is, it transforms data in the form of a set of tables to data in the form of a tree. The tree form, or XML, is defined entirely by an XML schema.
You may view your relational data as XML in a browser according to a choosen schema , which must have certain information in the appinfo elements. This includes the table and column name - xml element associations as well as the database information like the JDBC driver and URL. You may view the next XML record or specify one by entering a key.
There are currently a large number of products dedicated to this end (see
Bourret
). What distinguishes this product is it's ability to construct arbitrarily complex trees.
There are, in general, many different hierarchal organizations (schemas) for the same set of tables. Consider the case of a relational database for a book company, BookBiz, which has tables for all their titles, authors, editors, etc.. The below examples shows different schemas for a title organization, author organization, editor organization, etc., and the corresponding XML constructed from these schemas.
This software needs both Java and the Mathematica kernel. It is both a Java package and a Mathematica package, Mathematica uses certain tools from Java and vice versa. It may be run from a Java program as any Java application through it's API. Mathematica is totally transparent to the Java user, no knowledge of Mathematica whatsoever is necessary.
One may download a limited trial version of Mathematica from www.wolfram.com that will work with this package. Mathematica also comes with a Java machine.
You may run it from Mathematica as you would any Mathematica package. In this case Java is totally transparent and the user need no nothing about Java.
There is also a convenient Viewing Toolbar (RunDemo.bat). You can use this without being a Mathematica or Java programmer.
The application allows you to specify an XML schema, which has both the data tree information, and database information like the JDBC driver and URL. It then opens the database through the JDBC API. An XML record is then constructed from the relational database according to the schema and returned as an XML string. This XML record may optional be returned in the form of a variety of Java object like DOM, but not in this beta version. (We use the terms tree of data, XML record and schema instance interchangeably.)
When run from Java or the Viewing Toolbar it only uses the Mathematica kernel. The kernel and Java communicate through the Mathematica JLink package. The Mathematica XMLCapacity package is used to import and export XML.
This beta version will only function under Windows, but a future version will work on any platform on which both Java and Mathematica are supported.
Basic Commands
From Java the basic access services are provided by the below methods.
When running from Mathematica there are analogous functions with the same name, but beginning with a
capital letter.
There are many other commands which might be considered an XML and XML Schema toolkit. Also you can simply export an entire database, or a subset of it, to a native XML database as defined by the chosen XML schema.
This version is much to slow for many application. See the Performance Appendix in the User Guide.