Which free native XML database is most popular?

Question

If I asked about most popular free relational database I'd expect to get MySQL or PostgreSQL or perhaps SQLite.

But what about native XML databases? Which is most popular and stable? Did you use one in some of your projects? Which one? Which one would you advise for personal medium sized project?

Answer 1

Our company uses eXist extensively for our DITA content management system.

The product is very good. Includes full XQuery support, efficient xml indexing and a good application layer to build things off of.

As per previous comments, the notion that Native XML databases are a fad is not really representational of the market ither. In fact in terms of NoSQL products, MarkLogic server (a native XML database) blows away nearly every other SQL database in terms of performance, especially related to document-centric search. Its being used very extensivly in some of the most performance critical applications of some very big companies. (Its also very expensive!)

I won't go into the XML vs JSON thing here too much because its not worth it. However, from a storage standpoint xml vs json is not really a relevant argument. All databases essentially normalize the information down to very efficinet stores. However XML is a very solid standard that is backed with many powerful technologies.

• XPath (parent or ancestor selection anyone?)
• XQuery
• XSLT
• XML Schema
• XProc
• XMLDB
• Namespacing

If you have a specific need for JSON then its a good idea to investigate a JSON database. Just be aware that XML really isn't a fad, and is a very solid framework when working with document centric data.