Re: PostgreSQL's XML support comparison against other RDBMSes

On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 07:31:36 -0600, Jim C. Nasby wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 05:22:40PM +0400, Ivan Zolotukhin wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Does anybody know good comparison/review article of XML support in major
>> RDMBSes? I know that PostgreSQL's XML capabilities are quite weak, but
>> how far is it from other products?
>
> For other databases it's probably somewhere between PostgreSQL and Oracle.
> :)

DB2's upcoming Viper storage engine will change that drastically. It runs
in parallel with the traditional relational engine but has provisions for
correctly updating the XML in ways that are suitable for trees.

> BTW, something to consider is that thanks to PostgreSQL's ability to use
> so many different languages for stored procedures, there's a lot you can
> do in XML in the database via stored procs. I believe perl has pretty good
> XML support, for example. And of course there's java...

Regardless of language you are still limited to tables as storage
structure. XML does not fit well into tables, even though many DBAs (as
well as programmers and managers) seem to have a problem grasping that.

AFAIK MySQL wanted to use BerkeleyDB/XML for XML support. Not sure what has
become of those plans in light of the Sleepycat buyout by Oracle and the
supposedly planned Firebird engine adoption. PostgreSQL could really set
itself apart by adopting a similar mechanism, including XQuery/XUpdate
support.
Unfortunately the engineering efforts for such a solution are significant;
my guess is that IBM will have a huge advantage over everyone else in this
area.

Holger