XML Databases
As you work with XML documents, you may find yourself needing to manage collections of documents. XML databases (sometimes called XML-native databases) are built for just this task. You can query a collection using XPath or XQuery (see below). Another specification, XUpdate, defines how collections get updated, although most XML databases support a variety of mechanisms for adding and updating documents. There are a variety of available XML databases, both open source and commercial.
In addition, many relational database servers support an XML datatype. With columns of this type, XML queries can be combined with traditional, relational queries. The disadvantage of XML support in relational databases is that, in general, the support has been bolted on and not fully integrated into the software.
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