Berkeley DB XML Reference Guide: Introduction

Berkeley DB XML Reference Guide:
Berkeley DB XML

Introduction

Berkeley DB XML (BDB XML) is a programmatic toolkit specifically designed to store and manage XML data in its native format. BDB XML is built on top of the existing Berkeley DB database product, which provides fast, reliable, scalable, and mission-critical database support. Application developers can choose the version of Berkeley DB that is most suitable for a particular application: Berkeley DB Data Store, Berkeley DB Concurrent Data Store, Berkeley DB Transactional Data Store, or Berkeley DB High Availability.

BDB XML provides document query support through XQuery 1.0 and, by extension, XPath 2.0. XQuery is a W3C Recommendation. At the date of this publication, the supported version is the final Recommendation, dated January 23, 2007. BDB XML also supports the Last Call Working Draft of XQuery Update (Aug 27, 2007) for modification of document content. In addition, BDB XML is tested against the XQuery Test Suite, version 1.0, and results have been published to the W3C.

This document provides a very high level introduction to BDB XML. Users of BDB XML are assumed to have existing knowledge of XML, XQuery, XPath, either C++ or Java, and Berkeley DB.

This document also provides instructions on how to build the library, and instructions on how to compile and link the library with your application.

For a brief tour of Berkeley DB XML, see Introduction to Berkeley DB XML. For a complete introduction to BDB XML, see either the C++ or Java version of the Berkeley DB XML Getting Started Guide. For a complete description of the BDB XML API, see either the C++ API reference or the Javadoc.