XML Database

XML database is a data persistence software system used for storing the huge amount of information in XML format. It provides a secure place to store XML documents.

You can query your stored data by using XQuery, export and serialize into desired format. XML databases are usually associated with document-oriented databases.

Types of XML databases

There are two types of XML databases.

1. XML-enabled database
2. Native XML database (NXD)

XML-enable Database

XML-enable database works just like a relational database. It is like an extension provided for the conversion of XML documents. In this database, data is stored in table, in the form of rows and columns.

Native XML Database

Native XML database is used to store large amount of data. Instead of table format, Native XML database is based on container format. You can query data by XPath expressions.

Native XML database is preferred over XML-enable database because it is highly capable to store, maintain and query XML documents.

Let's take an example of XML database:

In the above example, a table named contacts is created and holds the contacts (contact1 and contact2). Each one contains 3 entities name, company and phone.