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The process of creating content — information meant for human consumption — is almost always extremely effort-intensive. People must spend time organizing information prior to creation, constructing the content, and laying out the information so that it is easily read. With so much time, cost, and effort invested in content, it makes sense to reduce costs by reusing content as much as possible. Furthermore, content-oriented processes involve a complex set of interactions that progress in a “Content Lifecycle” consisting of five major stages: content creation, management, publishing, syndication, and protection. Each of these phases requires different technologies, processes, and resources.
By rearchitecting content representation technologies to treat content as another asset in the corporate IT infrastructure, businesses can realize the benefits long promised to us by reusable and agile content. But first, we need to move from ad-hoc content creation to content componentization, and then to content services. XML and Web Services are the key to this transition that can help organizations maximize the value of their content.
While much has been written about XML data storage, none of the research to date has focused on the key questions:
In attempting to understand the answers to the above questions, ZapThink realized that there was no single answer for any of these key questions. In fact, it seems that the various requirements for XML data storage pull end-user customers in different directions when they are deciding how to implement XML storage requirements. As such, this study seeks to do what no other study before it has done: show that XML data storage is not a distinct market segment, but instead a functionality requirement for applications that require XML storage in order to achieve their overall system objectives.
nalysts at XML and Web services consultancy ZapThink Friday made the prediction that the native XML database (NXD) niche no longer exists as a separate market.
ZapThink Senior Analyst Ron Schmelzer told internetnews.com XML-enabled relational database (RDBMS), content management, and integration vendors are best suited to offer general-purpose XML data store solutions, while XML database pure-plays are offering more focused XML data storage solutions. Schmelzer believes XML database features will eventually become incorporated in an increasing number of major software packages, including those offered by Microsoft, Oracle and IBM.
Read more at: Internetnews.comGoing forward, expect such native XML databases to become more common as the use of XML to represent all kinds of data spreads, says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at Zapthink LLC, an XML consultancy in Waltham, Mass. XML databases are better than traditional ones at preserving XML hierarchies, says Schmelzer.
For example, a document can be stored as a document instead of being shoehorned into rows and columns, Schmelzer says.
Tamino was the first to market and remains on top. But a number of other vendors, including IxiaSoft Inc. and Neocore Inc., offer similar products.
In the future, expect to see vendors of traditional relational database management products, such as Oracle Corp., ship native XML databases as well, he says.
Read more at: Computer WorldXML is pervasive. In a matter of years, it will fuel every application, device, and document found in enterprise networks. However, as XML proliferates, it will stress existing systems and enterprise budgets to their breaking points. This is because existing n-tier software architectures and legacy infrastructures were not designed to process this verbose new data type efficiently. What enterprises need is a new way to process XML in the network, rather than in software at the database, application server, or presentation tiers. Yet today’s existing network infrastructure is limited to switching lower layer protocols and is unable to detect XML – much less parse and process it.
An emerging class of hardware-based XML-aware network devices addresses the performance, security and management issues that come with XML’s use in enterprise applications. These purpose-built network devices enable enterprises to process high volumes of XML in a way that offers high performance, optimal security, lowest total cost of ownership, and greatest centralization of XML processing capabilities.
The process of creating content — information meant for human consumption — is almost always extremely effort-intensive. People must spend time organizing information prior to creation, constructing the content, and laying out the information so that it is easily read. With so much time, cost, and effort invested in content, it makes sense to reduce costs by reusing content as much as possible. Furthermore, content-oriented processes involve a complex set of interactions that progress in a “Content Lifecycle” consisting of five major stages: content creation, management, publishing, syndication, and protection. Each of these phases requires different technologies, processes, and resources.
By rearchitecting content representation technologies to treat content as another asset in the corporate IT infrastructure, businesses can realize the benefits long promised to us by reusable and agile content. But first, we need to move from ad-hoc content creation to content componentization, and then to content services. XML and Web Services are the key to this transition that can help organizations maximize the value of their content.
Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC, an XML and Web services-focused analyst group, said, “NeoCore XMS 2.6 allows users a potent way of storing, managing, and navigating through the rich hierarchy of XML in ways not possible with other types of solutions.”
Read more at: XML JournalRon Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC, an XML and Web Services-focused analyst group, said that NeoCore’s release of XMS 2.6 illustrates the forward-thinking advancements the company is capable of producing for XML information management. “NeoCore XMS 2.6 allows users a potent way of storing, managing, and navigating through the rich hierarchy of XML in ways not possible with other types of solutions,” Schmelzer says. “These enhancements allow companies to save time and money, while working smarter and faster in order to thrive in today’s challenging economic environment.”
Read more at: NeoCore News ReleaseAs the challenge of data integration and information integration climb IT professionals’ agendas, it is important to know what kind of information is out there, anyway. One commonly bandied about statistic holds that 70 percent of all corporate information is contained in legacy systems. Our friends at Neocore, a vendor of an XML-base information management system based on a self-constructing XML database solution (www.neocore.com), passed on these figures to us from Zapthink Research (www.zapthink.com), which focuses on the XML marketplace. According to ZapThink, 80 percent of enterprise content is unstructured; 9 percent is contained in relational databases and 11 percent is in legacy systems. Who is right? Who knows? Enterprises themselves usually don’t. That is why most successful data integration projects start with companies taking an inventory of their data assets. For more insight, read the September issue of Database Trends and Applications magazine. Subscribe at www.dbta.com/subscribe.
Read more at: Database Trends and ApplicationsThe only true solutions for enterprise-wide XML data storage and retrieval are XML-enabled RDBMS and Native XML Data Store (NXD) approaches. The challenge with XML-enabled RDBMS is that they are not very well suited to highly extensible and flexible documents, while the challenge with NXDs is that they are unproven technologies with very small user bases. However, there is another option that is a sort of "middle ground": the use of an interpretive middle layer over standard RDBMS systems that offers schema-independent, "native" XML data storage. In this vein, B-Bop offers their Xfinity Server as a way of providing the features of Native XML storage while utilizing existing relational storage architectures.