What Are Native XML Databases?
As the name implies, native XML databases (NXDBs) are specially designed systems used to store XML documents. What differentiates NXDBs from other databases is the way they actually store these documents. XML-enabled databases break down the XML documents into data elements for storage, possibly in relational tables. In contrast, NXDBs use XML documents as their fundamental unit of storage. This storage process parallels the way relational databases have rows in tables as their fundamental unit of storage. NXDBs conserve the original structure of the document as opposed to breaking it down into data objects or tuples. This new technique actually provides quite a few benefits. One of the benefits is that users don’t have to worry about mapping the XML document to an alternate data structure; they can simply insert the data in XML format and retrieve it in its original XML format, known as round-tripping. Round-tripping is especially valuable when very complex XML structures exist that w
