In regard to this thread. It all boils down to simply comparing
comparable entities.
Data storage:
A database stores and retrieves a chunk of generic data
The SWORD low level drivers store and retrieve chunks of generic data
You might argue that we need to add a new driver which can retrieve data
from a database. That might be a fine and reasonable argument. I'll
argue that our storage formats are specialize for speed and size and
will probably beat any general RDBMS on the market, merely because we
have the option of developing our storage format for very specific data.
Trying to move beyond "data storage", when comparing and RDBMS to SWORD
seems to me invalid.
What SWORD builds on top of "data storage" is the same thing you will
have to build on top of any data storage method you choose:
verse/key parsing (What does it mean when a user says:
jn3.16-27;4-5;7.12-15),
parsing localization for different languages,
book index organization decisions,
tag markup handling and conversion, in generally (specifics below)
strongs numbers
footnotes
transliteration
morphological information
cross references
section headings
words of Christ
Greek / Hebrew accenting
Greek variants
searching in any combination of these categories
book management: installation / removal
Basically, what it comes down to is that the advantage of using SWORD
over an RDBMS is that you get to contribute to and use the contributions
of all the things other people have had to write ON TOP OF "DATA
STORAGE": Basically, Bible software tasks. We have SOME mechanism for
all these things, and we improving and adding more facilities all the
time. If you don't like the current way we do something, we provide a
modular architecture which allows you to, say, change the way OSIS
footnotes are handled, by replacing a very small class with one all your
own.
Now, one might not like the way we have tackled this architecture or
these individual tasks and think they can do all the work themselves, as
some do. And I'm not faulting them for this. We have far from perfect
solutions for all of these things. But what it comes down to, is that
our goal here... at CrossWire... is to TRY to tackle these objectives as
a community and work together to build a generic engine that does
provide easy to use facilities for these specific tasks of processing
Biblical texts and related materials (including, but mostly above, the
data storage level).
You can choose to contribute to this common effort, or you can do it all
yourself. It's a free universe, mostly.
-Troy.
PS. Still trying to wooo you into using our efforts, I will provide
another example of a very common and basic Bible task.
Retrieve HTML markup from an OSIS text, for a specific translation,
turning off footnotes, but including cross-references:
SWMgr library;
library.setGlobalOption("Footnotes", "Off");
library.setGlobalOption("Cross-references", "On");
cout << library.getModule("KJV")->RenderText("jn.3.16");
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