using XML as datastore?

[bishnu]

hi all,

I have intermediate knowledge in XML. I have a website which rely on a huge mysql database which processes hundres of records in a day. Obiviously this will take some time to return data to the client. I am wondering if I can use XML as datastore and any query that is made my client will be processed by XML. Is it possible? if possible, what things should be taken into account? and what are other advantages or disadvantages I would get?

Thank you

[NogDog]

The first thing to take into consideration is that, assuming they store the same amount of data, querying a database will be much faster than querying a XML file. In fact, the database will be faster even if it has a lot more data in it than the XML file. DBMS's are designed from the ground up for storing and retrieving data as efficiently as possible. XML is just a way to mark up text in order to organize it in a standardized way. In order to interact with an XML file in the same way as you do with a database, you would need to use a fair amount of code in whatever programming language you are using to read the file, parse the XML, and then extract the desired data, or insert/update data and then write the modified XML text back to disk.

[bishnu]

Dear NogDog! thank you for your reply.
I just want to know if xml helps search engine spriders to crawl the content of my data?