[xquery-talk] new adapters

[Michael Kay]

>   Might I suggest that you also consider Oracle as an XML 
> native database?

If every XML database is a native XML database, then the adjective "native"
becomes meaningless. What does an XML database have to do to be non-native?

My own view is that the word "native" tells you where something originally
came from: it's a statement about its history. So a native XML database is a
database system that was conceived with the primary purpose of storing and
retrieving XML. Any database system that has added XML to its previous range
of capabilities will never be a native in the XML world, any more than I
will ever be a native of Italy.

That leaves completely open, of course, the merits of the two kinds of
product. I think they are likely to have different strengths and weaknesses.
But to my mind products that were designed to do XML only, and products that
were designed to do XML alongside many other things, are quite different
animals, and it's useful to have terminology that distinguishes them.

Michael Kay