Applescript, XMP, and custom namespaces

Question

Having had to switch gears from JS to AS to solve a database integration problem, I could use some help getting specific XMP out of my AI files via AppleScript. Extracted this from the InDesign forums... doesn't work for illustrator (gives error "expected expression but found property")
tell links
            set InhouseClient to get property link xmp namespace "http://ns.Inhouse.com/Inhouse" path "Client"
end tell
I know I can dump the whole XMP string with:
set XMPStringData to (get XMP string of current document)
but I'd rather do something like the first example. If I were in JS, I'd use
var property = myXmp.getProperty(propertyuri, propertyname, XMPConst.STRING);
The syntax looks pretty close to the first AppleScript, but why is it choking on the "property" when inside a "tell Illustrator" when is works inside a "tell InDesign"?

Answer 1

Thanks for the suggestions Mark.
Here's the situation. We have approx 1TB of various files on multiple partitions of a server. I'm creating a library (FileMakerPro) to use as a search engine for specific AI files and associated metadata scattered throughout the server. We have a pattern of folders where the AI files I need live (jobFolder/Graphics/filename.AI), but these are nested in a variety of places.
I'm using set folderList to (folders of entire contents of (startFolder) whose name is "Graphics") as alias list to get a list of eligible folders to search, then checking to see if AI files are present, then adding the AI files to a list of file paths. This list is the source for other scripts to be called by Filemaker to extract the custom XMP, find and link to the preview (already generated in a separate folder).
Current times to ingest small sets of graphic paths using this method:
Set 1, found 160 eligible folders with 1600 files in 44 minutes, or 17 seconds per folder/1.6 seconds per graphic.
Set 2, found 310 eligible folders with 3800 files in 82 minutes, or 16 seconds per folder/1.3 seconds per graphic.
Set 3, needs to crawl through about 8 times the number of folders, and can't finish before the server times me out (I pushed the AppleScript timeout to 20 hours, so that's not the problem).
In additon to metadata that has already been defined, I want to capture the full-text of the graphics in the DB for search purposes... so will have to open each file anyway to do that (unless there's another way).
Thanks,
Alex