Symphony.

I heard a rumour earlier today from Gunglien regarding the future use of XML as a basic storage format in Symphony 2.4 as opposed to the current database format. (See Gungliens comment in this post

Can somebody maybe expand on the future Symphony plans along this direction.

That was regarding the specification of sections (field definitions, etc.), not the storage of actual data. For a discussion on that, see XML databases.

OK. Can you maybe expand on the section specifications that will use XML as it's basic format in Symphony 2.4? Thanks a million in advance!

In other words, the storage of pages and the structure of sections being in XML instead of the database. There's a GitHub issue on it: Store Sections and Pages as XML

Fields' data will still be in the database.

There's no finalised specification as of yet. We should write one and get a defined schema in place too.

There's still a lot of work to be done, as 2.4 will be the initial version of this idea, and it will be refined from that point on. I have some more ideas to put forward about the change myself, but am currently working on other parts of the core.

Keep an eye on that link David made to the issue tracker.

Checked out the GitHub.

1) Any official word if this feature actually will be part of the 2.4 release?

2) What is the expected time for 2.4 to be released?

OK, thanks designermonkey for your infos. I will be keeping an eye on developments.

1) Any official word if this feature actually will be part of the 2.4 release?

Yes, it will feature in 2.4

2) What is the expected time for 2.4 to be released?

Given our current resources and knowing the contributors commitments, early 2013.

This sounds awesome. Symphony modelling Symphony anyone?

I take it 3.x is on the backburner now? Or am I miles behind?

Miles behind ;o)

The 3 prototype was abandoned in favour of slower incorporation of the ideas into the 2.3 codebase. And we are getting there!