What is XML storage?
An XML database is a data persistence software system that allows data to be specified, and sometimes stored, in XML format. This data can be queried, transformed, exported and returned to a calling system. XML databases are a flavor of document-oriented databases which are in turn a category of NoSQL database.
How XML data can be stored in a relational database?
Let’s look at some techniques you can use to store XML documents in relational databases. The simplest and easiest technique is to create a table within the database that has a single large text field where you can store the XML data. Some databases require you to store large amounts of data as a BLOB rather than text.
Is the data storage format XML a database?
No one has mentioned yet that no data storage format by itself is a database. A database includes a storage format and a retrieval mechanism. XML is not a retrieval mechanism, so it cannot be a database.
What are the advantages of using XML in a database?
The benefits of XML are that it is somewhat human readable, and that it allows for easy transfer of data between completely separate systems. Neither of those advantages applies for a local database. The one exception is configuration files, which are generally small, and generally need to be editable by humans.
Which is the most efficient way to parser an XML file?
In an XML file, the most efficient way is to run a SAX parser over your document, doing an awful lot of reads and seeks before you get to your actual data; you can hardly get this any better than O (n), unless you use indexes, but then, you’d have to rebuild the entire index for every insertion (see below). Inserting is even worse.
Is it possible to determine where XML is stored?
XML, however, doesn’t really fit these requirements. Due to its nested tag structure, it is impossible to determine where in the file a certain value is stored (in terms of a byte offset into a file) without walking the entire document tree, at least up to the match.