A Narrative Review of Storing and Querying XML Documents Using Relational Database

Abstract

Extensible Markup Language (XML) has become a common language for data interchange and data representation in the Web. The evolution of the big data environment and the large volume of data which is being represented by XML on the Web increase the challenges in effectively managing such data in terms of storing and querying. Numerous solutions have been introduced to store and query XML data, including the file systems, Object-Oriented Database (OODB), Native XML Database (NXD), and Relational Database (RDB). Previous research attempts indicate that RDB is the most powerful technology for managing XML data to date. Because of the structure variations of XML and RDB, the need to map XML data to an RDB scheme is increased. This growth has prompted numerous researchers and database vendors to propose different approaches to map XML documents to an RDB, translating different types of XPath queries to SQL queries and returning the results to an XML format. This paper aims to comprehensively review most cited and latest mapping approaches and database vendors that use RDB solution to store and query XML documents, in a narrative manner. The advantages and the drawbacks of each approach is discussed, particularly in terms of storing and querying. The paper also provides some insight into managing XML documents using RDB solution in terms of storing and querying and contributes to the XML community.