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Fw: Ideal XML DB Features (was RE: XML versus Relational Database)


This might be of interest for the discussion about the redesign of
ozone's XML persistency layers.

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Begin forwarded message:

Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 12:03:56 -0500
From: Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Ideal XML DB Features (was RE: XML versus Relational Database)




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Linda Grimaldi [mailto:grimlinda@earthlink.net]
> Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 11:05 AM
> To: Benjamin Franz; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: RE: XML versus Relational Database
> 
> 
> Would anyone care to itemize the features they consider essential in a
> "decent" XML database?  I have my own, but I am hopelessly biased...

Here's my *personal* list, in rough order of importance/priority, of what an
ideal XML DB would support; I'm hopelessly biased too, but Tamino does NOT
meet all of them :~)  I would be very interested in discussion of which are
most useful, what important features I missed, etc.  (I'm talking about a
low-level DB "engine" architecturally similar to Oracle, DB2, etc. not a
full-fledged "Applications Server" with content management, revision
control, B2B/EAI/etc. integration ... all that is nice, but could be layered
on or bundled with the DB engine).

- XML-like storage model - Does the product logically store data in a way
that is compatible with the structure of XML, as opposed to forcing a
user-defined normalization to RDBMS format?

- XML view or RDBMS data - Does the product allow a dynamic XML  view, or at
least an easy way to import into XML, of data in an external RDBMS?

- Transaction support - Is there built-in support for multi-operation
transactions that can be committed or rolled back as a unit?  

- XML standards for database definition - If a database schema must be
defined, is it easy to import an XML DTD or schema to define the database
structure?

- XML standards for for queries - Is Xpath or something very similar
supported as an XML query language, and/or is there a firm commitment to
support the W3C XML Query language as it evolves?

- XML standards for data manipulation - Is the W3C DOM API supported as a
means of accessing and manipulating data in the DB?

- Built-in XSLT - Does the database support XSLT transformation within the
database engine (or a query language that allows data transformation on
retrieval)?

-Data binding support - Is some tool that generates Java or C++ classes to
access and manipulate data supported?

- Advanced text search - Does the query system support advanced text
searching features, such as proximity searches, fuzzy searches, stemming, or
conceptual searches?

- Dynamic format evolution - Is it easy to change the database definition as
the original DTD/schema evolves?

- Extended SQL queries - Is a SQL-based query language with extensions for
XML supported as a query language? 

- Persistent DOM view - Can the database be viewed/manipulated as a huge
persistent DOM object?

- SAX API support	 - Is the SAX API supported?

- Data replication - Is there built-in support for geographically
distributing databases and keeping them synchronized?

- Validate on Store - Does the DB optionally prevent XML instances that are
not valid against a defined DTD/Schema from being stored?

- Xlink, Xinclude, XML Topic Maps, etc. support in the database - Can the
database resolve various linking/inclusion directives and return the
selected instance and related instances in a single operation? 

- Conventional database API support - Does the DB allow the XML data to be
accessed -- to the extent logically possible -- via the Microsoft Active-X
Data Objects API,  J2EE Connectors, or some other API that will be familiar
to experienced database people?  

--
______________________________________________________________________
Lars Martin                                    mailto:lars@smb-tec.com
SMB GmbH                                        http://www.smb-tec.com