What is a native XML database?
Native XML databases are designed especially for storing XML documents. Like other databases, their basic supported features include transactions, security, multiuser access, programmatic APIs, query languages, and so on. NXDs differ from other databases in that their internal data models are based on XML only. NXDs are most useful for storing document-centric data because they preserve document order, processing instructions, comments, CDATA sections, and entity usage, while XML-enabled databases do not. Furthermore, NXDs support XML query languages, allowing you to pose requests like, “Get me all documents in which the third paragraph after the start of the section contains a bold word.” Such queries are clearly difficult to ask in a language like SQL. In addition, NXDs prove useful for storing documents with a natural format of XML, regardless of what those documents contain. For example, consider XML messages in an SOA environment. Although these documents are probably data-centric
