Both RDBMS and NoSQL database vendors have added varying degrees of support for storing and processing JSON data. Some vendors store JSON directly as text while others add new JSON type systems backed by binary encoding formats. The latter option is increasingly popular as it enables richer type systems and efficient query processing. In this paper, we present our new native JSON datatype and how it is fully integrated with the Oracle Database ecosystem to transform Oracle Database into a mature platform for serving both SQL and NoSQL style access paradigms. We show how our uniquely designed Oracle Binary JSON format (OSON) is able to speed up both OLAP and OLTP workloads over JSON documents.

XBRL (extensible Business Reporting Language) is an XML based standard for electronic data exchange and communication of business financial documents and reports among government bodies, regulators, financial institutions and reporting entities. In this paper, we analyze the XBRL model from a perspective of data management to show why XBRL has created a new emerging vertical domain of database applications that offer opportunities and technical challenges for the database community. We outline the concept of an XBRL repository as a data hub to store and process collections of XBRL documents while maintaining document integrity based on XBRL semantics, providing document manageability, operational completeness and XBRL dictionary, query and business intelligence services. We then share our experiences of building the main components of the XBRL repository using the Oracle XML enabled RDBMS that leverages both XML and relational technologies as a backbone to host industrial strength XBRL applications. We also highlight technical challenges and potential solutions to each of the components. Finally we propose the potential of leveraging the XBRL data model concept for providing XML data normalization and XML having multi-hierarchy.

RDBMS provides best performance for querying structured data that starts out with a well-defined schema. However, such a 'schema first, data later' approach does not work for unstructured data or data without much structure. Therefore, RDBMS typically stores such data without any schema in LOB columns (for example, Character Large Object (CLOB) or Binary Large Object (BLOB) columns) and provides Information-Retrieval (IR) style, keyword-based search capability over these LOB columns. Lately, XML as a native datatype (XMLType) in RDBMS has been introduced via the SQL/XML standard. Semi-structured data with or without any schema can be stored into such XMLType columns, and XQuery provides query capability over them. In particular, XQuery full text specification provides the capability of searching keywords within document context. Such full context-aware text search capability is more powerful than pure keyword search, since the user can now provide fine-grained context in which the keywords should occur. However, XML with XQuery full text searching requires that the user first convert her text data into XML and store them into XMLType column. Such massive physical data migration with possible loss of document fidelity and its potential impact on existing production environments are often expensive enough that users are reluctant to adopt the XML/XQuery approach.

Efficiently storing and querying XML has been widely studied in research and industrial settings. Major RDBMS vendors now support XML as a native datatype in their systems and provide physical means of storing schema agnostic XML data. Typically this data is stored in CLOBs, BLOBs, or tree forms, with path or value indices used to efficiently process XQuery and SQL queries. However, in many use case queries derived from industrial XML applications, we find that it is very common to query XML based on a group of related property data and to query on the master-detail relationships using the SQL XMLTable construct. We propose an indexing mechanism called the XMLTable Index which is more efficient than the path and value index approach for this class of queries, and provides a way to efficiently process these queries over any physical XML storage form. The XMLTable Index complements the path/value index approach, and can be enhanced in its capabilities by using it in conjunction with path, value, text and other domain indices.

Querying XML effectively and efficiently using declarative languages such as XQuery and XPath has been widely studied in both academic and industrial settings. Most RDBMS vendors now support XML as a native data type with SQL/XML and XQuery support over it. However, the problem of updating XML is still the subject of ongoing effort. Several SQL/XML update extensions have been implemented and an XQuery Update Facility is in the proposal phase to add an update capability to XQuery. There are a lot of challenges involved in updating XML, particularly identifying and updating partial fragments of XML while maintaining concurrency, transactional semantics and validity of the document. In this paper, we illustrate the XML update functionality provided by Oracle XML DB within the context of SQL/XML. This functionality has been developed and optimized based on actual customer use cases of querying and updating XML. We discuss our design philosophy, optimization details for providing capability of updating XML and compare it with the current XQuery Update Facility proposal with the goal of providing insight into incorporating the XQuery Update Facility in the SQL/XML standard in the future.

XML has become an attractive data processing model for applications. SQL/XML is a SQL standard that integrates XML with SQL. It introduces the XML datatype as a native SQL datatype and defines XML generation functions in the SQL/XML 2003 standard. The goal for the next version of SQL/XML is integrating XQuery with SQL by supporting XQuery embedded inside SQL functions such as the XMLQuery and XMLTable functions. Starting with the 9i database release, Oracle has supported the XML datatype and various operations on XML instances. In this paper, we present the design and implementation strategies of the SQL/XML standard in Oracle XMLDB. We explore the various critical infrastructures needed in the SQL database kernel to support an efficient native XML datatype implementation and the design approaches for efficient generation, query and update of the XML instances. Furthermore, we also illustrate extensions to SQL/XML that makes Oracle XMLDB a truly industrial strength platform for XML processing.

With XQuery becoming the standard language for querying XML, and the relational SQL platform being recognized as an important platform to store and process XML, the SQL/XML standard is integrating XML query capability into the SQL system by introducing new SQL functions and constructs such as XMLQuery() and XMLTable. This paper discusses the Oracle XMLDB XQuery architecture for supporting XQuery in the Oracle ORDBMS kernel which has the XQuery processing tightly integrated with the SQL/XML engine using native XQuery compilation, optimization and execution techniques.

XML is being increasingly used in diverse domains ranging from data and application integration to content management. Oracle provides an enterprise wide platform for managing all types of XML content. Within the Oracle database and the application server, the XML content can be efficiently stored using a variety of storage and indexing methods and it can be processed using multiple standard languages within different programmatic environments. 1.