DataForge (from codehaus) looks a lot like the kind of thing I have been both trying and trying not to develop as part of the data access layer for the iCite net prototype. As you can imagine, so far I have been mostly trying not to develop it, so maybe I'll be able to use DataForge instead ;-) Anyone have any experiences with DataForge, or comments?

My goal is to have a data store format-neutral way of storing iCite data, so that iCites can be implemented using (especially) either RDBMS / SQL and/or XML data behind the scenes. And, importantly, I need a storage format-neutral query interface (i.e., the same query should work whether the stored data is XML or RDBMS).

Because a lot of front-end data input to / output from iCites uses XML (e.g., XHTML, RDF/XML, RSS, ATOM), I lately have been trying to build the back-end store in XML. But, I'm not very satisfied with the query interfaces to XML (though I think XQuery has a lot going for it).

Also, iCites need / want to do some data caching, and DataForge has this built-in. Nice.

I have an immediate little mini-prototype iCite I am trying to build quickly, and I think I'll try to build it on DataForge. (Unfortunately, I'm having a little RSI problem with my arm, so coding and posting here might be a little slow this week.)