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Re: XML-enabled databases, XQuery APIs

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: XML-enabled databases, XQuery APIs
• From: David Lyon <david.lyon@c...>
• Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 08:44:36 -0400
• In-reply-to: <003001c54133$ae25d660$1601a8c0@DURANTE>
• References: <003001c54133$ae25d660$1601a8c0@DURANTE>
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On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 4:50 pm, Ken North wrote:
> in an article by Edd Dumbill. Edd quoted Ron
> Bourret as mentioning "Oracle 9i release 2 was the first out with "native"
> XML support, but their "native" XML support means storing the XML in a CLOB
> column [snip]".

I am a big fan of doing that..

> That requires clarification because there are some persistent
> misconceptions about XML and databases.
>
> From the time people first started talking about "native XML databases",
> there's been a myth that SQL databases cannot store and index XML documents
> in their native format.

For business XML data exchange, I think that it is the perfect combination.

And for mass interoperability, I would advocate an ultra-simple SQL database
structure (like the one I posted about a month ago on xml-dev) that can be 
setup to send/receive xml documents. It should be able to exist on all 
database vendors databases (ie be non-exclusive) and be based on two 
accounting tables; traders(companies) and trader_documents.

The problem with file based XML systems is that it is awful to manage. 
Databases are so much cleaner to maintain. If the documents are filed nicely 
inside memo/xml fields, well I think how easy is that.

Just need to have some nice open source communications software to do the 
(what can be surprisingly) quite tricky job of transferring the xml 
documents.

> Developers wanted more, of course, such as being able to describe document
> structure and shred documents (map document content to columns). That's
> also been available for years with SQL platforms such as Microsoft SQL
> Server, Oracle, Sybase and DB2 (XML Extender).

Even now I think are happy to have more. Anything that they can show to the 
Boss and get approval for spending (wasting) time looking into :-) 

Open source is great for that.. I've come to discover..
 
> Even more desirable is implementing XML as an SQL type. This provides
> efficiencies for the SQL engine and query optimizer. Informix was the first
> to demonstrate that at XML conferences in 1999. Those demos showed the XML
> type gave significantly better performance than XML stored in a CLOB
> column. (IBM acquired Informix in 2001).

That's interesting, true.



David

-- 
Computergrid : The ones with the most connections win.

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    • From: "Ken North" <kennorth@s...>

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