Because XML data lends itself to a hierarchical structure rather than a relational structure, it may be difficult to store XML data in traditional relational database systems.

The W3C has published a first public working draft of XML Schema Patterns for Common Data Structures, a set of data types, structures and schema patterns to increase Web services interoperability.

convert data structures to XML, so your applications can rely on XML to retrieve data from multiple sources. But adopting XML sometimes means trading one set of problems for another.

That's where the Perl module called XML::Simple comes in. It takes away the drudgery of parsing XML data, making the process easier than you ever thought possible.

A database that stores XML documents. There are two types. The first is the "XML-enabled database," which is a relational or object-oriented database that has been extended to hold XML data. In ...