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Exporting Data to XML

Proximity provides the export-xml.sh shell script (export-xml.bat for Windows) for exporting data in Proximity databases to an XML format. You can export complete databases as well as selected database elements (attributes and containers).

During export, Proximity converts the characters <, >, and & to the corresponding entities: &lt;, &gt;, and &amp;. Newline characters are converted to underscores.

The general form of a call to the export-xml.sh script is

export-xml.sh  host:port  filename  exportType  exportSpec

where

  • host:port is the MonetDB server’s host and port

  • filename is the name of the file that will contain the XML output

  • exportType is an optional argument that indicates the type of data to be exported

  • exportSpec is an optional argument that indicates the specific instance of the data type specified by exportType

The exportType and exportSpec arguments are omitted when exporting the complete database.

Legal values for exportType are

  • object-attribute

  • link-attribute

  • container-attribute

  • container

Note that the values of exportType use hyphens as shown above only when used as arguments for the export-xml.sh shell script or export-xml.bat batch file. Use uppercase text and substitute underscores instead of hyphens (e.g., OBJECT_ATTRIBUTE) when using these keywords within a script or in Java code.

When exporting an attribute, the value of exportSpec is the name of the attribute to be exported.

When exporting a container, the value of exportSpec is the container name and a UNIX-like path that indicates where the target container resides in the container hierarchy. The root container is specified by a single slash (/) with child containers appended to the path. For example, to export the samples container, which is a child of the 1d-clusters container, use /1d-clusters/samples as the value of exportSpec. Do not include a trailing / in the path. The root container is a virtual container provided as a convenience for accessing other containers—you cannot export the root container.

Exporting databases to XML

Exercise 3.4 walks through the process of exporting the complete ProxWebKB database.

Exercise 3.4. Exporting a database to XML:

[Caution]

The export process overwrites any existing data in the output file without warning. Make sure that output file is empty or can be safely overwritten.

  1. Change to the $PROX_HOME directory.

  2. Export the database. (Substitute the appropriate port number if you are using a different port.) 

    > bin/export-xml.sh localhost:30000 \
  $PROX_HOME/doc/user/tutorial/examples/my_proxwebkb.xml

    Data files can only be exported to the same machine as that serving the database.

    Proximity outputs the following trace (leading information showing elapsed time and execution thread has been omitted from the trace for brevity): 

    INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * exporting database to:
   /proximity/doc/user/tutorial/examples/my_proxwebkb.xml
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving objects
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving links
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving O attributes
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute school
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute url_server_info
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute url_protocol
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute url_hierarchy1
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute url_hierarchy2
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute url
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute page_num_outlinks
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute page_num_inlinks
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute url_hierarchy1b
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute page_words_top100
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute pagetype
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute url_hierarchy3
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving L attributes
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute link_id
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving attribute link_tag
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * saving C attributes
INFO  app.ExportXMLApp: * done exporting

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