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as far as I understand it, shredding hiearchical documents into a relationa store is optional feature of Oracle XMLDB

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database-features/xmldb/xm...

It is called XMLDB structured storage (vs binary storage, that one actual stores the hierarchical XML naitively)

The XMLDB structured storage I think has been available since 2003 (but I might be wrong there).

Oracle's XMLDB structure requires XSD declaration. Within that declaration XMLDB can use 'hints' to indicate if a given set of attributes across documents is related. And if yes, it will shred the docs in a way that the related attributes will be co-joined.

The advantage, as the author of ToroDB noted below is a) space saving b) ability to use relational joins that are using disk-optimized access strategies.

The disadvantage (at least in Oracle XMLDB structured option) -- is the need for declaration of the model ahead of time, and joins for deeply/complex structured documents.

It looks like ToroDB 'senses' the model of each document on the way in. I think there are definetely use cases for this approach, that tolerate the trade off between ingestion speed and storage control. Plus using a relational engine underneath allows for ACID properties (eg multi-object rollback/commmits) -- which native mongo does not provide.



platform, very interesting the XMLDB info. As you point out, ToroDB does not require any model declaration ahead. It's perfectly "schema-less", as it 'senses' the model of each document.

Regarding ingestion speed, it is very high, even compared to MongoDB's. There are some benchmarks in this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/8kdata/toro-db-pgconfeu2014


I don't really see why ToroDB can't be implemented on top of Oracle :) There could be some demand for it there.

I needed this for a side project at work a while back, but didn't get the time to implement it.

Oracle's cumbersome enough already; I for one have no desire to drag XSDs into it to use XMLDB.


I'm not saying it's not gonna happen...




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