storing xml in filesystem or db?

Lucas Fletcher

Hi All,

I've searched the web for an article explaining the many tradeoffs between
storing your XML in a database vs the filesystem but I haven't really found
anything of note.

This is the little I've come up with:

FileSystem Pros:

1) more scaleable than db, although I haven't seen data on how much more
2) you can index your xml files using third party tools (although from what
I've found there seems to be a distinct dearth of these for the windows
platform. LOTS for unix and co.)

FileSystem Cons:

1) if you have any data in a db you must be very careful with integrity.

DB Pros:

1) many dbs now (and Yukon later) will allow you to do xpath or xquery
against xml. not sure what the indexing support is like...
2) if you have other data in db then you can get it from a single source

DB Cons:

1) xml support seems to have been grafted on to most major rdbms, and is
still a big question mark...
2) less scaleable than filesystem

If anyone can point me to resources that address this question I would be
grateful. References to good xml file indexers for windows, case studies on
performance differences, details on Yukon + xml, etc. would all be very
useful...

--
Lucas Fletcher
lu***@dealersin notions.com
http://dealersinnotions.com

Nov 11 '05 #1

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1882

SQL Server Development Team [MSFT]

See below for some additional datapoints.

Best regards
Michael Rys

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"Lucas Fletcher" <lu***@dealersi nnotions.com> wrote in message
news:uJ******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP12.phx.gbl...

Hi All,

I've searched the web for an article explaining the many tradeoffs between
storing your XML in a database vs the filesystem but I haven't really found anything of note.

This is the little I've come up with:

FileSystem Pros:

1) more scaleable than db, although I haven't seen data on how much more
2) you can index your xml files using third party tools (although from what I've found there seems to be a distinct dearth of these for the windows
platform. LOTS for unix and co.)

FileSystem Cons:

1) if you have any data in a db you must be very careful with integrity.

DB Pros:

1) many dbs now (and Yukon later) will allow you to do xpath or xquery
against xml. not sure what the indexing support is like... We will support indexing of native XML datatypes.
And if your XML represents relational data, you can already use XPath
against annotated schema views to query your data... 2) if you have other data in db then you can get it from a single source
There are some additional advantages such as recovery, concurrency control
etc, that you don't get from a basic filesystem.
DB Cons:

1) xml support seems to have been grafted on to most major rdbms, and is
still a big question mark... Actually that is not the case anymore (at least not for Yukon and for
Oracle). 2) less scaleable than filesystem This depends on what you use as your scaling criteria. If you scale query
performance, then the DB should be better.

If anyone can point me to resources that address this question I would be
grateful. References to good xml file indexers for windows, case studies on performance differences, details on Yukon + xml, etc. would all be very
useful...
For public details on Yukon you currently have to either enroll into the
Beta1 release (which is full, but wait list places are still available if I
remember correctly) or wait until early next year when the public beta
ships.

As to resources: Did you look at Ron Bourret's web page on XML and
databases? --
Lucas Fletcher
lu***@dealersin notions.com
http://dealersinnotions.com

Nov 11 '05 #2

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