I'm not sure these 2 need to be separate options. Store the files in the
database, in whatever TEXT/CLOB/XML data-type is appropriate (and supported
by your db)... assuming there are no performance reasons not to do so.
That way everything's in one place, easy to get consistent backups.

As far as data entry, if your maintenance front-end is web based (as I
assume from "CGI forms"), what about using http upload (input type="file")?

Andy Kohler / UCLA Library Info Systems
[log in to unmask] / 310 206-8312

--On Wednesday, December 15, 2004 12:35 PM -0500 Eric Lease Morgan
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> To what degree do I use a database to implement these features?
> Maintaining an authority list and sets of controlled vocabulary terms
> almost necessitates a database application. Fine. No problem. I can
> accept that. But do I create database of the Catalogue's metadata and
> then point to the TEI files? Ick! That is too fragile, and IMHO not
> very elegant.
>
> Alternatively, I could store the entire TEI files into a database. It
> is not like the database can not handle the file size, but then the
> question is, "How do I do data-entry against the database?" Many of
> these texts are a few hundred K in size, and consequently not very
> amenable to CGI forms.
>