The Ins and Outs of XML and DB2 for i5/OS

XML represents a fundamental change in computing. It allows applications to move away from proprietary file and data formats to a world of open data interchange. XML has become ubiquitous not only because of its range of applications, but also because of its ease of use.

Although XML solves many problems by providing a standard format for data interchange, some challenges remain. In the real world, applications need reliable services to store, retrieve, and manipulate data. These services have traditionally been offered by DB2 for i5/OS.

In this IBM Redbook, we discuss the challenges of representing XML hierarchies in the relational database model. We provide an in-depth explanation of the three most popular approaches to bridge the hierarchy, the relational model dichotomy:

• Programmatically process the XML documents and map their hierarchy into a relational database.
  
• Use database middleware to handle the XML parsing and XML-to-relational database mapping.
  
• Use Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Transformation to transform inbound XML documents directly to SQL scripts.