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    <p>I guess my short answer would be "don't". I'm a bit of a greybeard, and have done a lot of mapping XML data into relational databases. If you do decide to use such a database, you're going to have to validate your data constantly. You'll also need very strict discipline in order to avoid having databases with little commonality. Using a schema helps here, as most XML schemas are object-oriented and thus extensible, easing the need for analysis to keep from creating similar data with dissimilar names, which will cause anyone who has to access your database to think evil thoughts about you.</p> <p>In my personal experience, if you're doing the sorts of things where a networked database makes sense, go for it. If not, you lose all the other things relational databases can do, like integrity checking, transactions and set selecting. However, since most people use a relational database as an object store anyway, I guess the point is moot.</p> <p>As for how to access that data, just put it in a Hashtable. Seriously. If there is no schema anywhere, then you'll never know what is in there. If you have a schema, you can use that to generate accessor objects, but you gain little, as you lose all the flexibility of the underlying store while simultaneously gaining the inflexibility of a DAO (Data Access Object).</p> <p>For instance, if you have a Hashtable, getting the values out of an XML parser is often fairly easy. You define the storage types you're going to use, then you walk the XML tree and put the values in the storage types, storing the types in either a Hashtable or List as appropriate. If, however, you use a DAO, you end up not being able to trivially extend the data object, one of the strengths of XML, and you have to create getters and setters for the object that do</p> <pre><code>public void setter(Element e) throws NoSuchElementException { try { this.Name = e.getChild("Name").getValue(); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new NoSuchElementException("Element not found for Name: "+ex.getMessage()); } } </code></pre> <p>Except, of course, you have to do it for every single value in that schema layer, including loaders and definitions for sublayers. And, of course, you end up with a much bigger mess if you use the faster parsers that employ callbacks, as you now have to track which object your'e in as you produce the resultant tree.</p> <p>I've done all this, although I normally construct a validator, then an adapter that provides the match between the XML and the data class, then a reconcile process to reconcile it to the database. Almost all the code ends up being generated, though. If you have the DTD, you can generate most of the Java code to access it, and do so with reasonable performance.</p> <p>In the end, I'd simply keep freeform, networked or hierarchical data as freeform, networked or hierarchical data.</p>
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