Selim Mimaroglu

Berkeley DB XML (BDB XML) is a popular native XML database. It can be accessed through the shell or within another program. This month I will show you how to use BDB XML in Java. BDB XML has similar APIs for all supported languages such as Java and C++, therefore the ideas presented in this article apply to all supported languages. I have been closely following BDB XML from the very first release, and there have been tremendous improvements in this product. Last month in this column I wrote about using BDB XML through the command shell (WSJ Vol. 5, iss. 12). I also mentioned some of the basic BDB XML concepts, which I think may be helpful in constructing Java programs. If you aren't familiar with BDB XML concepts, I recommend reading last month's article or checking the online BDB XML documentation. Installation BDB XML is distributed by SleepyCat Software, and has ... (more)

eXist - An Introduction To Open Source Native XML Database

In this article I am going to introduce you to the open source, free (GNU LGPL license), native XML database eXist (www.exist-db-org). Data is important, no question about it. Data that can't be queried is not very useful. Users expect to have good query response time. From my personal experience and testing, I am confident in saying that eXist is a fairly good database. It has very good query response time, it is very user friendly, it's easy to set up and operate, and it's written in Java, therefore it is platform independent. This article will show you how to use eXist as a s... (more)

XML Product Review: "Getting to Know Xindice"

Apache Software Foundation's Xindice is an open source native XML database. Apache provides great software to developers such as the Apache Web Server, Tomcat Application Server, Cocoon Web Development Framework, Struts Framework, Ant, and many more under an open source license. Apache Web Server is an industrial-strength product that is used by many high-traffic Web sites. Apache Tomcat is a servlet container that implements both Java Servlets and Java Server Pages. The fact that Xindice is a member of the Apache Software Foundation gives it substantial credibility, because Apac... (more)

Storing XML in Relational Database Management Systems

When we need to store XML in a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) we have to think of nonnative ways to store it, since the structure of XML does not fit the flat relations of the RDBMSs. Although some RDBMS vendors support XML storage and XQuery such as Oracle 10g (release 2), this support is not yet common. Some of the well-known RDBMSs are Oracle, DB2, Informix, Sybase IQ, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. If you have one of these products, or a similar product, you should be interested in reading this article. There are several ways to store XML in an RDMS. One p... (more)

Generating XML from Relational Database Tables

This article looks in detail at how to generate XML data from your relational database. Although the examples were run on Oracle, very little of the code is Oracle specific. You can easily use all the ideas and examples presented here in other relational databases. We did this project at University of Massachusetts Boston as part of the Electronic Field Guide (EFG) project. XML is the de facto standard for data exchange. It's simple, Unicode based, and platform independent. XML is a metadata language; it contains information about the data. All these features make it an attractive... (more)