Storing and searching XML in CLOBs

Question

Speaking to an oracle employee at the Oracle booth at JavaOne
recently. They suggested I store XML in CLOBs
and use the DOM or SAX to reparse the XML later as needed.
I agreed that this was the best solution for my problem
(which was how to manage many different XML documents using many
different DTDs in a document management system)
The big problem was searching this document repository
to locate relevant information.
This is where Intermedia seemed ideal (still does).
It would be nice to see an example of setting this up using
Intermedia in Oracle 8i, demonstrating how to define the
XML_SECTION_GROUP and where to use a ZONE as opposed to a FIELD
etc.
Anybody care to take a shot at this ????
For example:
How would I define Intermedia parameters
so that I would be able to search my CLOB
column for records that had the <keyword>
"aorta" and "damage" in the <caption>
using the following
XML (DTD implied)
<image filename="OurImageName.gif">
<fname>WellKnownFileName.gif</fname>
<keyword>echocardiogram</keyword>
<keyword>aorta</keyword>
<caption>This is an image of the vessel damage</caption>
</image>
Thanks
Thomas Bennett
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Answer 1

Eric (guest) wrote:
: You can't do XML structure-based searches with intermedia. You
: can search for text within a given element, but nothing more
: complicated than that.
The example he gave involves exactly that -- searching for
text within XML elements. interMedia can do this.
: It also does not do attributes.
Upcoming 8.1.6 version allows searching within
attribute text. That's something like:
dog within book@author
We're working on attribute value sensitive search,
more like:
dog within book[@author = "Eric"]
: Thomas Bennett (guest) wrote:
: : How would I define Intermedia parameters
: : so that I would be able to search my CLOB
: : column for records that had the <keyword>
: : "aorta" and "damage" in the <caption>
: : using the following
: : XML (DTD implied)
: : <image filename="OurImageName.gif">
: : <fname>WellKnownFileName.gif</fname>
: : <keyword>echocardiogram</keyword>
: : <keyword>aorta</keyword>
: : <caption>This is an image of the vessel damage</caption>
: : </image>
begin
ctx_ddl.create_section_group('mygrp','basic_section_group');
ctx_ddl.add_field_section('mygrp','keyword','keyword');
ctx_ddl.add_field_section('mygrp','caption','caption');
end;
create index myidx on mytab(mytxtcolumn)
indextype is ctxsys.context
parameters ('section group mygrp');
select * from mytab
where contains(mytxtcolumn, 'aorta within keyword')>0;
options:
* use XML section group instead of basic section group
if your tags have attributes or you need case-sensitive
tag detection
* use zone sections instead of field sections if your
sections overlap, or if you need to distinguish
between instances. For instance, keywords. If keywords
is a field section, then
(aorta and echocardiogram) within keywords
finds the document. if it is a zone section, then it
doesn't, because they are not in the SAME instance of
keywords.
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