[XML-SIG] Re: Where to Start?

[Fredrik Lundh]

Greg Lindstrom wrote:

> I work at a small firm dealing with administering health care plans.  We deal with a lot of 
> records in the EDI X12 format, but I have downloaded and installed a tool to convert the file to 
> xml.  I've been around the coding world going on 25 years now (I started in IBM 360 assembler) and 
> have seen many technologies come and go (and some hang on way beyond their time).  I have heard 
> many good things about XML and am here to ask you -- the experts -- why I should be excited about 
> using it.  In particular, now that I have my data in XML format, what can I do with it other than 
> visualize it with my web browser?  Ideally, I would like to yank out all information related to a 
> given claim for processing.
>
> I have XML Processing with Python (Sean McGrath, 2000, Prentice Hall) which I'm guessing is out of 
> date by now.  Where do I start to learn about using XML to process my files?  How do I pull out 
> data, and how do I pull out related data?

if you're new to XML, and more interested in the data in the files than the XML
structures themselves, ElementTree and xmltramp are two decent alternatives:

    http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/xmltramp/
    http://www.effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm

API summaries:

    http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/technology/python/elementtree-model
    http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/technology/python/xmltramp-model

(xmltramp might be a bit easier to use for simple cases, elementtree is a bit more
flexible and a bit more efficient, especially if you're using the C implementation)

</F>