XML Companion, The, Third Edition

XML or SQL

There is a clear case to be made for the use of XML as a storage format for information that can be conveniently treated as a structured document. Few would argue that XML is ideal for handling information comprised of sequentially and hierarchically arranged sub-components. There is a similar strong case to be made for the use of relational database technologies to create, store, query, updated and extract large volumes of highly structured information. Again, few people would argue that this information should be stored in XML documents instead (though XML remains a good candidate for exchange of information between systems). However, some material cannot be categorized quite so easily, and in this circumstance the decision is less ...