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Two announcements of interest to folks working with XML and databases...
(1) In March 2002, Oracle posted an XQuery prototype at:
http://otn.oracle.com/sample_code/tech/xml/xmldb/content.html
with support focusing on the "R" (Relational Data) and the "XMP"
(Experiences and Exemplars) XQuery use cases, and featuring an
experimental JDBC-style Java API for XQuery as well as a sql()
function for using XQuery over SQL query results. Our goal is
ultimately to provide both a SQL-flavored and an XQuery-based
query *syntax* for XML content in Oracle leveraging the same
underlying database engine via appropriate query rewriting. That
common underlying engine is now production. See (#2).
(2) This week -- over two years in the making -- Oracle announced
the release of Oracle9i Release 2, with major new native database
support for XML, and made the software available for download for
eight different platforms. Key new features include:
-> Single database engine supporting all existing datatypes
(relational, SQL99 objects, data warehousing, geospatial,
time-series, multimedia, etc.) integrated with a *new* native
XMLType...all sharing a common SQL query language (extended for
XML), common maintenance, transactions, backup/recovery, etc.
-> Support for forthcoming ISO SQLX standard extensions to SQL for
constructing XML in SQL including the operators XMLElement(),
XMLAttributes(), XMLForest(), XMLAgg(), and XMLConcat()
-> Full W3C XML Schema 1.0, XPath 1.0, XSLT 1.0, and DOM Core
support for native XMLType datatype implemented deep inside the
engine and exposed to SQL, PL/SQL and Java API's. Users can
augment built-in processing of XML documents with stored
procedures, functions, and triggers as for any other types and
tables.
-> Automatic Object/Relational Storage for XML documents based on
XML Schema, with optional fine-tuning of the mapping via Schema
Annotations (already supported in XML Spy 4.3 tool). Includes
optional support for full DOM fidelity and mixed content
storage.
-> SQL extensions for XPath-based extract(), extractValue(),
existsNode(), and updateXML() operators for manipulating
documents, including the ability to rewrite a subset of XPath
expressions to use underlying object/relational indices and
full-text indices for maximum performance.
-> Plus a lot more.
A more complete overview of what's new for XML functionality is at:
http://otn.oracle.com/docs/products/oracle9i/doc_library/release2/appdev.920/a96620/whatsnew.htm
Full documentation is online and searchable in HTML and PDF formats at:
http://otn.oracle.com/docs/products/oracle9i/doc_library/release2/index.htm
Technical overviews and whitepapers are available at:
http://otn.oracle.com/tech/xml/xmldb/content.html
You can download a developer's licensed version for experimentation on
any/all of the following eight platforms:
(*) WindowsNT/2000/XP
(*) Sun SPARC Solaris (32-bit)
(*) Sun SPARC Solaris (64-bit)
(*) Linux
(*) AIX (64-bit)
(*) AIX5L
(*) HP-UX
(*) Compaq Tru64
At http://www.oracle.com/start/dbrev2/intro.htm
Any technical questions can be posted in our "XML Discussion Forum" at
http://www.oracle.com/forums
It's been hard not being able to talk about all of this new
support for more than two years. The cat is finally out of the bag! :-)
Enjoy.
__________________________________________________________
Steve Muench - Developer, Product Mgr, Evangelist, Author
Simplify J2EE and EJB Development with BC4J
http://otn.oracle.com/products/jdev/htdocs/j2ee_bc4j.html
Building Oracle XML Apps, www.oreilly.com/catalog/orxmlapp
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