Towards an industrial strength SQL/XML infrastructure

Abstract

XML has become an attractive data processing model for applications. SQL/XML is a SQL standard that integrates XML with SQL. It introduces the XML datatype as a native SQL datatype and defines XML generation functions in the SQL/XML 2003 standard. The goal for the next version of SQL/XML is integrating XQuery with SQL by supporting XQuery embedded inside SQL functions such as the XMLQuery and XMLTable functions. Starting with the 9i database release, Oracle has supported the XML datatype and various operations on XML instances. In this paper, we present the design and implementation strategies of the SQL/XML standard in Oracle XMLDB. We explore the various critical infrastructures needed in the SQL database kernel to support an efficient native XML datatype implementation and the design approaches for efficient generation, query and update of the XML instances. Furthermore, we also illustrate extensions to SQL/XML that makes Oracle XMLDB a truly industrial strength platform for XML processing.