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Re: Indexing solution for native XML database

• To: Michael Kay <mike@s...>
• Subject: Re: Indexing solution for native XML database
• From: Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@g...>
• Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:40:09 -0600
• Cc: Timo Hildén <castaway@d...>, xml-dev@l...
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On 11/29/05, Michael Kay <mike@s...> wrote:
> > I'm searching for an indexing solution for my native XML
> > database project,
> > which I'm writing as a learning project.
> >
> > I use C++ as development language and a relational database
> > as backend.
>
> Why?
>
> I simply wouldn't start from here. Relational databases are bad at storing
> hierarchic data, they are bad at storing data whose order is significant,
> and they are bad at storing data whose structure is irregular. Many of the
> XPath axis traversals will map to recursive queries, which cannot be
> expressed in first-order predicate calculus. Even the operation of
> determining namespace context will require either a recursive query, or
> highly-redundant data storage.
>
> You'd be better off starting with an object database.

Gee Michael, care to over generalise just a tad?

If your data has low update frequency then a set/subset in-order data
model will have flat query structures but provide direct transforms to
hierarchical structures.  Update and insert operations can be
expensive in the general case for such a model, but for specific cases
it may not be an issue.  An ordered index in many relational databases
can have as good or better performance than in an object database.

Sure, a relational database might not be the best fit for a given
hierarchical structure. But for other cases the fit may be as good or
better than any other database....  Given the rather low level of
hierarchy expressed in the example I can see several ways of
addressing performance, but I'll address direct those directly to the
author of the question.

--
Peter Hunsberger

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    • From: Timo Hildén <castaway@d...>
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    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>

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