Oracle's XML SQL (XSU) is a Java API that provides XML-to-SQL (and the reverse—SQL-to-XML) mapping services, letting you map XML elements to database table columns so you can store and retrieve XML documents with ease.
by Deepak Vohra
July 26, 2006
ou can think of an XML document as a relational table where the various elements represent columns in a database table. Therefore, by mapping the various elements to a table, you can store XML in relational databases. This mapping process is called XML-to-SQL mapping technology.
Oracle created the XML SQL (XSU) Java API to convert XML to SQL, and vice versa. Before you can perform such mapping, you must create the table to which you want to map the XML document. XSU maps XML elements to specified database table columns. You should be aware that mapping an XML document to a database table with XSU does not store the attributes of that XML document; but you can store those by applying an XSLT transformation to the XML document prior to storing it, transforming the attributes you want to store into elements, which you can map to columns. XSU also lets you retrieve data from the database and convert the data to an XML document. Again, XML documents generated with XSU do not include attributes; however, you can create them post-XSU by transforming the XSU-generated document with XSLT.
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ou can think of an XML document as a relational table where the various elements represent columns in a database table. Therefore, by mapping the various elements to a table, you can store XML in relational databases. This mapping process is called XML-to-SQL mapping technology.
