具有版本的动态数据存储-ASP.NET

Question

My requirements are as follows,

The User will upload excel file contains metadata tables with data.Excel file can have multiple sheets and each sheet corresponds to a table. These are dynamic contents and using the sheet name we have to check such a table already exists or new table. These table information need to be stored in the server and displayed later.

Storage consists of two stages such as common/Personal. Common stage, all tables are common for all users and In personal each user will be having their own set of tables.

The common stage requires version control for tables, such as whenever there is a modification; such as edit table/new table, user having provision to overwrite to existing version, or create new version.

My question is: how can we store these data in the server?

Constraints are: Different versions in Common stage can have same table names and different users can have same table in Personal stage.

Is it OK to proceed with SQL schema or should I can go for XML to store the data and structure/ Any other thoughts?

Answer 1

As the schema of the worksheets are likely to change, you're better off looking at a NoSQL database (also known as Document Database) such as CouchDB , MongoDB or RavenDB (there are others). Document Databases do not have a schema, like relational databases (SqlServer, Oracle, MySQL, etc) so they store any data of any shape.

You will need to write some code that opens the Excel sheet. Check to see if the data is XLS (old Excel), XLSX (new Excel) or CSV (common format), because that will change which library you use to open them. Once you have the worksheet in memory, you should be able to save it straight the document database, making it common or personal as necessary.

I would avoid XML files because it is likely that you will need to search across the data or at least perform some sort of a lookup. This would be difficult with XML files and you might end up writing a database that does the same as a document DB!