[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Xml and Object/Relational Database
In Oracle8i we're taking a approach to allow developers the flexibility of storing XML Documents in any way they choose along the spectrum of: Single, Indexed text-BLOB ==> Fully Expanded into Foreign-Key linked Tables The middle ground is that highly structured data gets mapped into a set of related tables and structured text markup doc fragments get mapped into text-BLOB's. The simple example I use to show off why this might be interesting would be to consider an Insurance Claim XML document like: <?xml version="1.0"?> <InsuranceClaim> <ClaimID>12345</ClaimID> <LossCategory>7</LossCategory> <Settlements> <Payment> <Payee>Borden Real Estate</Payee> <Date>12-OCT-1998</Date> <Amount>200000</Amount> <Approver>JCOX</Approver> </Payment> </Settlements> <DamageReport> A massive <Cause>Fire</Cause> ravaged the building and <Casualties>12</Casualties> people were killed. Early FBI reports indicate that <Motive>arson</Motive> is suspected. </DamageReport> </InsuranceClaim> If you map the settlement payment sections into tables and columns and the DamageReport doc fragment into a text blob, then you can query over your datawarehouse of Insurance Claims to answer a question like: "How much money has Jim Cox approved to date in settlement payments for arson-related fire claims? " Using a straightforward SQL statement like: SELECT SUM(csp.Amount) FROM Claim_Header ch, Claim_Settlements cs, Claim_Settlement_Payments csp WHERE csp.Approver = 'JCOX' AND CONTAINS (DamageReport, 'Arson WITHIN Motive') > 0 AND CONTAINS (DamageReport, 'Fire WITHIN Cause' ) > 0 AND . . . /* Join Clauses */ We're participating in the W3C Query Language workshop today and tomorrow (as well as follow-on W3C XML Query work) to help shape the eventual W3C standard syntax for XML document queries. In the future, you may have alternative syntaxes to answer the same questions of your enterprise information, but this is our near term game plan. ____________________________________________________________________________ Steve | Consulting PM & XML Technology Evangelist | smuench@o... Muench | Java Business Objects Dev Team | geocities.com/~smuench Oracle XML Homepage http://www.oracle.com/xml
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