XML has dramatically changed the way we exchange and store data, and a new crop of standards promises to change the way we query data. On today's Internet, most data is queried and stored using relational databases, exchanged as XML, and displayed as HTML. For those who need to use XML and databases together, the last five years have been chaotic, creative, interesting, and often frustrating. Every major database vendor has added XML support, but each vendor takes a very different approach, and sometimes changes that approach dramatically from one version to the next. Today, the vendors seem to be lining up behind XQuery and the SQL/XML mappings - is this just the latest wave of marketing hype, or has the industry now found its way?
Robie, Jonathan. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Information Design>Databases>XML