XRecursive: Connecting XML with Relational Databases

Storing XML documents in a relational database is a promising solution because relational databases are mature and scale very well. They have the advantages that in a relational database XML data and structured data can coexist making it possible to build application that involve both kinds of data with little extra effort. This paper proposes an alternative method named Xrecursive for mapping XML (eXtensible Markup Language) documents to RDB (Relational Databases). The Xrecursive method does not need a DTD (Document Text Definition) or XML schema. Further, it can be applied as a general solution for any XML data. The steps and algorithm of Xrecursive are given in details to describe how to use the storing structure to storage and query XML documents in relational database. The authors report their experimental results on a real database, showing that the performance of their Xrecursive algorithm achieves better results in terms of storage size, insertion time, mapping time, and reconstruction time as compared with that SUCXENT and XParent methods. In overall, Xrecursive performs better in term of query performances as compared to the both methods.