CRITICAL SKILL 8.4

Store XML in Oracle XML DB

Databases are relational and XML is hierarchical, so prior to the introduction of Oracle XML DB there had been no simple, elegant way to integrate the two. Traditionally, developers have had two choices: either use a parser to deconstruct the document data into relational data and store it as such in the database, or store the entire document as a text file, preserving its text-based structure. Oracle XML DB starts it all off by first solving the problem of representing an XML document in its native format—the XMLType.

The Native XMLType

The XMLType was created to be able to preserve the XML paradigm while getting the benefits of relational performance and scalability. It is a native server data type ...

Get Oracle Database 10g: A Beginner's Guide now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.