i m working with project called backup n recovery for files in this i need to show the backed up data for restore i am maintaining data base for keeping track of backed up data now i need to show that data hierarchically so do i use database or just use xml for storing the log
Personally, I would choose writing an XML document summarizing backup operation.
The reason being, as a separate free-standing document, it could be copied to offsite storage for security. XML is also handy for the hierarchical structure of a file system.
A file-based database like is possible with Sqlite or HSQLDB would also be portable. But for hierarchical data it's not the best solution; XML is already hierarchical so that seems to be the better option.
Depending on how much data there would be, you could also consider a non-relational DB like neo4j (which -being graph-oriented- makes it easy to model hierarchies).
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