One of the more pressing problems is how to store and manage XML data. “There are really three ways you can do this,” says John Matranga, CTO of Omicron Consulting, in Philadelphia.

The XMLType data type obscures much of the complexity of storing and querying XML data, allowing admins to manipulate the data using familiar SQL tools and concepts.

IBM’s native XML storage feature “doesn’t add any value,” said Mark Drake, an XML technology manager at Oracle. Viper will also support XQuery for processing XML data, along with standard SQL.

3. XML storage won’t have the same drawbacks that hierarchical/network products did. Hierarchical systems failed because reusing data in multiple apps was too difficult. Today, however, RDBMS vendors ...

They also provide the data in a hierarchical format.When storing data in relational systems, an external primary key may be attached to the XML document for maintaining primary document keys.