BiBTex vs XML: Should I attempt to parse BiBTex at all?

[kr15py]

I have been tasked with modifying a particular project on Probability Distribution.http://www.avinashc.com/howardL/DistributomeNavigator.htmlOne of the goals that need to be achieved is separating the XML data into BiB (for the citations) and XML (for the relations). The aim being that a maintainer of the Distributome database can add references to the database easily.The issue I take with this approach is that I am not convinced that maintaining a BiB database is a good idea in itself because it is much easier to perform computations with an XML database. In particular; there is a mapping that exists between the nodes on this page http://www.avinashc.com/howardL/DistributomeNavigator.html and the references.When a node is clicked on, we iterate through all the tags and display the relevant references. I don't see any easy way of doing this if we are looking at a BiB database instead of an XML database.A suggested solution was using the project http://code.google.com/p/bibtex-js/ but it only seems to display the relevant data (url, author, etc) if it is present in the BiB, but does not really allow me to do computations on it (or I am missing some key part here). For example I cannot look at the node id (which is obtained from the XML) and match it with the id of the reference (which is obtained from the BiB).The motivation for separating the XML into references and relations is that the DB was getting large, and the motivation for separating it into BiB and XML was that it would be easy for the maintainer to modify the references DB.I would definitely prefer not to work with BiB files at all, but I am doing this as part of a software engineering class and I need to fulfil certain requirements.My questions are the following:1) How do I manipulate BiB files like XML?2) Is there a way that I can maintain the BiB and XML files for the references? One solution that I thought of was maintain a BiB copy for editing, and commit any changes to XML. It seemed like a reasonable middle ground for both parties.Thanks in advance.