[xquery-talk] new adapters

Stephen Buxton stephen.buxton at oracle.com
Sun Nov 28 14:09:05 PST 2004


/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./


  An interesting analogy.

  Surely if you spoke Italian fluently, lived in Italy, took Italian 
citizenship, and consumed Italian food and wine, then you should be 
considered in any study of Italians, even though you weren't born in Italy?

  In my experience, the word "native" as in "native XML database" is 
used not to indicate the origins of the database, but to indicate the 
level (and/or effectiveness) of its XML processing. See for example 
http://www.xmldatabases.org/radio/xmlDatabases/2002/06/25.html - "... 
Oracle 9i is now by every definition that I know of, a native XML 
database. .."

  I think the most useful approach is to consider a database's 
capabilities - /How well does it do what I need it to do?/ - rather than 
its origins.
  If "native" /does /indicate only the /origins /of a "native XML 
database", then Mauro has chosen a fairly arbitrary set of databases for 
his study - those that started life processing /only /XML.

- Steve B.

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