What is an XML Database?
An XML database is a specific species of database whose record format is stored as XML data items, as opposed to a relational table or flat file. XML databases have gained in popularity in the past couple of years as database vendors such as Oracle have added these capabilities into baseline RDBMSes. However, something like Oracle (or even MySQL) is a bit too much overhead for a large class of applications. This is where the concept of embedded databases can really help. Embedded databases are database software that provide many of the basic capabilities of their larger cousins, yet are small and simple enough to ship with your own application. For the purposes of this article I will focus exclusively on one type of embedded database, the embedded XML database. There are several open source XML databases, including Sleepycat’s DB XML, Xindice (an ASF project) and my personal favorite, eXist. I became an eXist fan when I had a project that had to parse a several megabyte XML file and tr
