Why Store Data in XML?

Data storage facilities are very critical for today's business operations. Today's businesses continually accumulate data, whether it's customer information, production information, or any of thousands of other categories of information. This data needs to be stored some place, and better yet, it needs to be stored in a relational format for easy retrieval and integration with other data. RDBMS systems such Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and many others are used to perform such tasks when security, speed, and efficiency pose concerns. RDBMS systems offer a great solution whenever internal or company-developed applications require access to the data.

The potential problem arises either when one application needs to access data of another application but does not have direct access to that application's database system, or when data need to be ported between different database systems ( especially true if the systems are from different vendors ). Most RDBMSs store their data in binary formats that are not directly accessible by other databases. Any external application wishing to interact with this data needs to utilize a database Application Programming Interface (API) provided by the RDBMS specifically for that product or a generalized interface, such as the Perl Database Interface (DBI). The Perl DBI provides a database independent API to a large number of databases. DBI's homepage is located at http://dbi.perl.org, where you can find a lot of information including the FAQ, documentation, mailing lists, and so forth.