Re: What is the logic of storing XML in a Database?

On Mar 26, 6:15 pm, "Karen Hill" <karen_hil..._at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> X-No-Archive:yes
>
> I see people putting XML documents in databases. Why do they do this,
> what is the logic behind it? Why not just put the data into tables?
> Why are the standards committees going along with this (XML SQL/
> MED)? Why don't people just use tables to store the data.

The question can't be answered without knowing more about the problem that is to be solved.

Standardized XML transport formats are commonly used for representing messages. Consider a problem space where messages are sent from a front office system to a back office system, and middleware needs to keep a repository of messages to support auditing and playback. In that case it would make perfect sense to strip out any fields required for querying, and store them plus the message. Storing all the fields relationally would not meet any business objective, and it might not be possible to reliably reproduce the original message from the relational representation.

Regards,
Daniel Parker Received on Tue Mar 27 2007 - 17:10:55 CEST