Re: [xml-dev] XML Database Decision Tree?

[Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@rpbourret.com>]

"Champion, Mike" wrote:
> 
> A quick, personal/un-official checklist:  I'll try to be neutral, but I'm
> sure my biases will shine through!

[good list snipped]

I'll add one more, although somebody else might have mentioned it by
now. Data in an XML-enabled relational database is accessible to both
XML and non-XML applications. The same is not true of almost all native
XML databases. That is, almost all native XML databases do not (yet)
support ways to return the data in non-XML format. (The only exception I
know of is GoXML, which allows you to bind application variables to
elements/attributes.)

This means that your non-XML applications will need an intermediate
layer to translate from XML structures to non-XML structures -- the
equivalent of writing the XML-enabling layer on XML-enabled databases.
(Oddly enough, the only people who do this are relational players. The
OpenXML function in SQL Server allows you to treat part of an XML
document as a table, and MERANT has (or at least had) an ODBC driver
that used XML documents in a similar fashion.)

-- Ron