>
> 1) The effect of the binary is to increase the parser space.
> The relational system doesn't care because it uses an internal
> representation.
>
> However, the binary is reputed to create a faster parse.
I would be very surprised if XML parsing contributes anything noticeable to
the cost of a database load (in shredding mode). Except possibly for a
pathological XML document containing 3 nodes and 3 billion bytes.
I haven't looked at the latest products from MS or Oracle, but my experience
of database loading with complex data and a realistic level of indexing is
that it's a couple of orders of magnitude slower than XML parsing. You can
improve that with a custom loader that bypasses SQL and does a lot of
heavy-duty sorting and merging to minimize head movement on the disk (does
anyone still do that?), but I think it's still true that the parsing cost is
immaterial.
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
