Richard Gambrell Lars Appel after Peter Chong wrote:
> >
> > I don't see ODBC as a requirement here. If I'm not totally down the
> > garden path, it should not be very complex to modify a plain program
> > that reads IMAGE data and outputs the results by DISPLAY or writing
> > to a file, to add a few XML tags around the data fields, forming an
> > XML data stream as a result.
> >
> > Something in the line of...
> >
> >   DISPLAY first-name.
> >   DISPLAY last-name.
> >
> > mutating into...
> >
> >   DISPLAY "<person>".
> >   DISPLAY "<firstName>" first-name "</firstName>".
> >   DISPLAY "<lastName>"  last-name  "</lastName>".
> >   DISPLAY "</person>".
>
> Actually, a generic program could walk the database by reading
> dbinfo and output a generic file.  Like Allergo's html generator
> for Image does.
>
> > Lars (ok, maybe I'm missing something important here)

The only thing I would say is missing here is making the data a little more
meaningful.  You can use ODBC or write a program with DBINFO but you will
get elements like:

<SOEDAT>10035</SOEDAT>

or

<CODARR_3>1.2e02</CODARR_3>

The first is a date in MANMAN and the second is the third element in an
Image array.  I like Lars idea of creating dynamic markup but I would want
to enhance the experience.  You can also add business logic for inbound XML,
which is more problematic for generic solutions.

Mark "Almost there R.S." Wonsil