XML DB - anything new and interesting?

[Robert Koberg <rob@koberg.com>]

Hi,

I am looking into XML databases as it relates to content management and
as a general web platform. Was wondering about the opinions of people on
this list -- any thoughts, comments, concerns?

A few things I have noticed:

* EMC/Documentum bought XHive. I can find very little information about
XHive. Is anybody using it? What are your thoughts about the product?
What are your thoughts about the integration with EMC/Documentum?

* MarkLogic seems to be doing a lot of things right. Its seems like a
great move to hire people like Norm Walsh and Micah Dubinko (as well as
Jason Hunter a long time ago). They seem to be the default choice /if/
you have the money. Is that your opinion?

Also, it seems a few people are trying to get the XRX (XForms Rest
XQuery) meme going. In the past when evaluating Xforms I found it
limiting with what I could do in the UI. I have been more comfortable
using javascript and XHTML directly. 

Are you comfortable using XQuery as your templating language? I am very
interested in using XQuery in an aggregation layer, not so much as a
templating language which is where the products (at least eXist and
MarkLogic) seem to want you to go. I think I would prefer to use XQuery
as the aggregator to feed an XSL transform. I have a slight worry there
that I would be duplicating some efforts like creating some DOMish
representation for the XQuery and then another one for the XSL
transform.

what do you think?

-Rob