Is XML the best data interchange format when importing large amounts of data as a scripted routine in PHP?

Question

If I have 50,000-100,000 product skus with accompanying information, including specifications and descriptions, that needs to be updated on a regular basis (at least once a day), is XML the best way to go as a data interchange format? The application is written in PHP, and I'm thinking SimpleXML to PHP's native MySQL calls (as opposed to using application hooks to dump data into the appropriate location in the DB). The server will be Linux-based, and I will have full root access. I know this is a rather generic question, which is why I made it community wiki -- I'm looking for an overall approach that is considered best practice. If it matters the application is Magento.

Answer 1

You have to define the parameters of "best" for your given scenario.

XML is verbose, which means two things

• You can supply a lot of detail about the data, including metadata
• Filesize is going to be big

The other advantage you gain with XML is more advanced parsing/selection "out-of-the-box" with tools like XPath.

But there are many other formats you could choose, each with their own advantage and disadvange

• Database Dump
• Data Interchange Format
• CSV
• JSON
• Serialized PHP

And several others.

My point is, that you need to figure out what's important to your system (speed? character-set support? human-readability?) and choose a format that's going to be compatible for both sides.