[Koha-devel] generic Koha data export format?

[MJ Ray]

Marc Chantreux <marc.chantreux at biblibre.com>
> On Wed, Jun 02, 2010 at 12:18:50PM +1000, Rick Welykochy wrote:
> > 1. CSV, directly importable into spreadsheet and database programmes
> > 2. XML, easily handled by MySQL, more transparent than CSV
> 
> I would choose YAML because
> - it can store tree (as xml) without the need of extra tags (required in
>   xml)
> - it's human readable/editable

Which is better on the above two points are debatable: YAML doesn't
need closing tags (which are often better for clarity, like comments
next to /TMPL_IF tags), but I think it has meaningful whitespace
which I don't like because humans are poor at seeing whitespace.

> - it supports pointed structures

Do we need them?

> - it's now supported everywhere

Not everywhere, but probably comparable with XML.  Does MySQL handle
it now?

I'm inclined towards XML because I know its tools better and
my experience is that XML tools are more widely available, although
I guess Koha requires both YAML and XML tools to be available.

Hope that helps,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)  Webmaster and LMS developer at     | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op