Question for Kevin

[Ray Hunter]

Dear Kevin:
What are some of the benefits of using xml with database connectivity?
I currently use php and java for accessing and manipulating database information.
A scenario that I have is that I want to create multiple xml file that contain dynamic information, however I want to use the powers of xml and xsl (or even xslt) to format and display the information. Does xml have powerful database connectivity like php or java?

-Ray

[Kevin Williams]

Ray,
XML doesn't provide "database connectivity" per se - it's only a way of representing data in a structured form. However, the most important thing that XML does provide is the ability to separate content from display - so you could use Java to create XML from relational data (or use Oracle or SQL Server's built-in XML creation functionality), and then use XSLT to transform the XML into whatever format you wanted (HTML, WML, and so on).
Does that answer your question?
- Kevin
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Kevin Williams
Senior System Architect, Equient Corporation
author of: Professional XML Databases

[Ray Hunter]

So what you are saying is that xml is mainly used for presenting data over multiple types of formats.
Then, what I can do is create the xml page and have multiple xslt pages for presenting that data ( i.e. html, wml, etc. ).

My next question -> Does xml have features for LDAP servers?

-Ray

[Frank Carver]

I still think you might be missing the point a little. XML is just data. How you generate that data or where you get it from is a different issue, as is what you do with it once you've got it. XML is a structured, regular, extensible, human-readable way of dividing up data into little, understandable bits; but it's still just data.
To use XML for anything other than just storing and retrieving this data, you need tools to process, extract or modify the little data elements within an XML document. These are parsers, XSLT processors and so on.
For your use you might either use a database which supports XML-formatted query results, or write some code (say in php or Java) which transforms a normal result set into XML. Once you have got this XML you can then process it using different stylesheets to generate different resulting formats for different uses.