[thelist] XML as poor man's database?

Mark Groen evolt at markgroen.com
Sat Jan 28 10:10:05 CST 2006


On Sat, 2006-01-28 at 09:23 -0600, Tom Schmidt wrote:
> Novice here, so be gentle.
> I am helping my wife start up a very small business, with an on-line presence.  She currently has a Weblog with some faithful readers, and I am attemtping to wrestle the weblog to do what I want to in order to provide the basics (images of product, shopping cart, etc. etc.).  I am choosing this for now since it is a poor man's choice.
> 
> I am in the process of customizing a page to display her products.  I *think*, since I don't have access to a server side database, that I can use an XML file to at least maintain information about the products I want to display (image file names & locations, descriptions, price, is it sold, and all that).  
> 
> I have the following concerns, however, and am hoping that I can get some feedback.
> 
> 1) What risks am I taking in using XML?  Are there browser and browser version compatibility issues?
> 2) I am using JavaScript to load in the XML file (easy solution).  However I now have the same question as before, are there certain XML parser's that a user/customer may not have access to? 
> 3) I am concerned that for the small number of users who have Javascript disabled (is this really a small number?), nothing will work on my site.  Is there a non javascript backup solution for this other than hard-coding all the information in my HTML?
> 4) Assuming I can use XML with Javascript, the "ideal" solution would allow me to both read AND write information to my XML file.  I am not very hopeful the write front since file access is account/password protected.  Should I just ditch this idea, or are there other viable alternatives for me?
> 
> Thank you in advance for any insights you can give me.

I built a javascript shopping cart back in school years ago, and was
told not to use it for the back end, it was just an exercise. It's just
too easy to get the Firefox developers toolbar, and insert your own data
into the javascript that's sent to the server. 

Javascript is okay for added whiz-bang, but should not be relied upon
for your core functionality in an e-commerce solution in other words.

Please tell us what software you are using for the blog, there's a real
good chance that someone on the list has already done this with the same
application, and can give you more help. btw, it's generally kind of
quiet on thelist on the weekend, worth it to see what people say come
Monday morning before making a decision.

-- 
cheers,

        Mark




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