Sheets is a web application that will allow users to create data tables (i.e. simple spreadsheets) collaboratively over the web, and share those sheets with other web applications using XML and REST—for example, some users might create a sheet containing a list of ISO codes, a CD database, or a schedule of speaking dates, and all of these will be available through machine-readable XML representations as well as human-readable HTML pages.

The primary purpose of Sheets, however, is to serve as an experiment in ditching the database—building a PHP web application using XML files rather than a database as its backend. At the time of submission, development is still in its early stages, so the talk may end up being either a success or a failure report; in either case, however, it will turn up some best and worst practices for using XML inside an application. Early findings include the need to store two XML files for each business object (one with private information, and one with public) and the critical importance of getting linking and the directory structure right.

Obviously, ditching the database completely won’t be practical for most large-scale web applications, but there might be benefits in incorporating more XML into those applications’ backends, especially where it can reduce the load on the database server and improve performance.