Storing application state as XML

[Andy Dent]

At 13:52 +0200 17/6/99, Ketil Z Malde wrote:
>We have a rather complex application which stores its state using the
>standard MFC serialize stuff (well, actually a somewhat hacked
>version, but that's beside the point).  Now, this limits our freedom
>in (or at least severely complicates) redesigning internal class
>structure while maintaining backwards file compatibility, and we've
>been pondering an XML format instead.

I've just finished a major enhancement to our cross-platform 
report-writer so it can write a document out to XML and retrieve it.

The single desktop document contains one or many reports, each containing
- schema
- style
- layout
- data

I enhanced our expatpp wrapper for expat so it supports invoking 
nested parsers. This is a really easy way to parse data within a very 
strict domain, much like your serialisation demands. It means you can 
keep the parser for a given object self-contained to avoid any given 
parser becoming complex. It also means the string comparisons as the 
events arrive are much more optimal.

You can grab expatpp from 
http://www.highway1.com.au/adsoftware/expatpp.html including sample 
code showing how the report writer parsing works.

More information on the report-writer and links to our (now) free 
OOFILE database API including the XML output and data parsing at 
http://www.oofile.com.au

Andy Dent BSc MACS AACM, Software Designer, A.D. Software, Western Australia
OOFILE - Database, Reports, Graphs, GUI for c++ on Mac, Unix & Windows
PP2MFC - PowerPlant->MFC portability
http://www.oofile.com.au/

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