Table of Contents
Proximity provides two text formats for importing and exporting relational data to and from a Proximity database:
an XML format
a plain text format
In general, because the associated import and export utilities provide better error checking, we recommend using the XML format when feasible. The use of plain text may be appropriate when the task does not require error checking or the database is too large for satisfactory use of XML.
These formats let you define objects, links, and arbitrary attributes on those objects and links as well as specifying containers and subgraphs for databases that include these structures. (Containers and subgraphs are created as a result of executing queries and are described in more detail in Chapter 5, Querying the Database.) Proximity also provides utilities for importing and exporting data using these formats.
This chapter describes how to import and export both XML and
plain text data. You can import and export individual containers and
attributes as well as complete databases.
Proximity also supports the export of selected data to tab-delimited
text files from the Proximity Database Browser; these specialized export operations are
described in “Specialized Data Export” later in this chapter.
The XML data format is described in Appendix C, Proximity XML Format.
The DTD for this XML format is located in
$PROX_HOME/resources/prox3db.dtd.
The plain text data format is described in
Appendix D, Proximity Text Data Format.
Objectives
The text and exercises in this chapter demonstrate how to
import XML data into Proximity
import plain text data into Proximity
create the sample database used for the tutorial exercises
convert standard, tabular data to Proximity’s XML import format
export Proximity data to XML
export Proximity data to plain text
export attribute values to a tab-delimited text file
export NST data to a tab-delimited text file (see “Exporting NST data” for a description of NSTs)