XML Databases Dynamically Redefine Meta-Databases

More and more implementations of XML related software are beginning to prove that the tree-like structures of XML databases may be the best useful working models of meta-databases with web service connections through web applications.

As you know, metadata is essential for understanding information stored in relational databases through schemas and other descriptors and has become increasingly important in supporting the growing notion that relational databases are falling behind when it comes to wireless networks, sensory arrays and numerous other kinds of complex networks associated with the corporate world of data trafficking.

Since metadata can describe how and when and by whom a particular set of data was collected, and how the data is formatted it can nicely become useful in a tree-like structure with attribute-tags serving as data-about-data.

For many years, databases were implemented as relation structures that kept records of kinds of data that many times lacked the appropriate pre-design and semantic relationships necessary for a normative vocabulary. This approach did not work well with different partially structured data types. But since many other kinds of data where already becoming well established within the specifications of relational type implementations, the concept of a regular corporate database became synonymous with being a relational model.

However, this started to change as the group of people who kept databases became more diverse. The more database designers began to explore the limits of the medium and of the electronic technology that made it possible, the more the boundaries of what could be called a "database" expanded.

Today, mobile data streaming devices may well change the definition of meta-databases entirely by making it possible for database designers to create new kinds of postings through growing web services connections. XML databases give designers a new flexibility in tying multiple kinds of different platforms to work together as one system

Another element of the XML database class of software that is starting to redefine meta-databases is the corporate database. The XML software has opened up a wide variety of web services that are drastically rearranging the IT departments within corporations.

As more companies experience the benefits of using XML datasets as metadata models for controlling relational structures with XML software, the more dynamic will the use of meta-databases become. Between all of these different forces that are constantly expanding and reshaping the XML database sphere of software, the more we will see new semantic tag systems reaching through the self defining nature of XML.