Articles by Selim Mimaroglu

Java Programming with Berkeley DB XML

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 20:45:00 EST

Berkeley DB XML (BDB XML) is a popular native XML database. It can be accessed through the shell or within another program. This month I will show you how to use BDB XML in Java. BDB XML has similar APIs for all supported languages such as Java and C++, therefore the ideas presented in this article apply to all supported languages. I have been closely following BDB XML from the very first release, and there have been tremendous improvements in this product.

Storing XML in Relational Database Management Systems

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 16:00:00 EST

When we need to store XML in a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) we have to think of nonnative ways to store it, since the structure of XML does not fit the flat relations of the RDBMSs. Although some RDBMS vendors support XML storage and XQuery such as Oracle 10g (release 2), this support is not yet common. Some of the well-known RDBMSs are Oracle, DB2, Informix, Sybase IQ, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. If you have one of these products, or a similar product, you should be interested in reading this article.

XML Product Review: "Getting to Know Xindice"

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:45:00 EST

Apache Software Foundation's Xindice is an open source native XML database. Apache provides great software to developers such as the Apache Web Server, Tomcat Application Server, Cocoon Web Development Framework, Struts Framework, Ant, and many more under an open source license. Apache Web Server is an industrial-strength product that is used by many high-traffic Web sites. Apache Tomcat is a servlet container that implements both Java Servlets and Java Server Pages. The fact that Xindice is a member of the Apache Software Foundation gives it substantial credibility, because Apache produces well-known, well-respected software. We will explore the Xindice native XML database beginning with its installation and advancing step by step. As the Xindice home page suggests, you are encouraged to pronounce it as 'zeen-dee-chay' with your best faux Italian accent. Xindice supports XPath query language, XML:DB, and XUpdate standards in Java, in addition to XML-RPC API for non-Java programmers.

Open Source Database Special Feature: An Introduction to Berkeley DB XML

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 11:45:00 EST

In this article I am going to introduce you to the latest version of the Berkeley DB XML, version 2.2.8. Berkeley DB XML (BDB XML) is built on top of the well-known Berkeley Database (BDB). BDB XML is an open source, native XML database. Like its ancestor, BDB, it's an embedded database. It provides APIs for the Java, C++, Perl, Python, PHP, and Tcl languages. It supports the popular XML query languages XQuery and XPath 2.0. I will show you how to use BDB XML in two ways. This month I will introduce the BDB XML shell, and next month we will explore using BDB XML with Java. BDB XML has a lot of features, and I will try to cover the most important ones.

eXist - An Introduction To Open Source Native XML Database

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:15:00 EST

In this article I am going to introduce you to the open source, free (GNU LGPL license), native XML database eXist (www.exist-db-org). Data is important, no question about it. Data that can't be queried is not very useful. Users expect to have good query response time. From my personal experience and testing, I am confident in saying that eXist is a fairly good database. It has very good query response time, it is very user friendly, it's easy to set up and operate, and it's written in Java, therefore it is platform independent.

Generating XML from Relational Database Tables

Wed, 13 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

This article looks in detail at how to generate XML data from your relational database. Although the examples were run on Oracle, very little of the code is Oracle specific. You can easily use all the ideas and examples presented here in other relational databases. We did this project at University of Massachusetts Boston as part of the Electronic Field Guide (EFG) project.