Java RMI & XML parsing.

Question

I'm new to Java so any help is greatly appreciated.
I trying to develop a distributed application using Java RMI that allows a user to enter a users name and be returned their email address and telephone number.
The details of users will be stored in an XML file. What the best way of developing this application? Should the XML file stay on the server side at all times and parse it from the server side, or is it best to send the whole XML document to the client and then parse the XML document for the information required at the client side?
Sorry if this seems a little bit of a lame question but as I say, I'm a newbie to Java and any help would be much appreciated!!!

Answer 1

I would suggest the data (the XML file in your case) should live on the server, and the client should send messages to the server saying "Here's the user's name, give me the e-mail address and phone number". Sending the entire data set to the client for every request would be very expensive in terms of network bandwidth; if you had 10,000 users, you would only want to send the information for the one user the client was interested in, not the information for all 10,000.