eXist-db (or eXist for short) is an

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

project for

NoSQL A NoSQL (originally referring to "non- SQL" or "non-relational") database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that is modeled in means other than the tabular relations used in relational databases. Such databases have existed ...

databases built on

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

technology. It is classified as both a NoSQL

document-oriented database A document-oriented database, or document store, is a computer program and data storage system designed for storing, retrieving and managing document-oriented information, also known as semi-structured data. Document-oriented databases are one ...

system and a

native XML database An XML database is a data persistence software system that allows data to be specified, and sometimes stored, in XML format. This data can be queried, transformed, exported and returned to a calling system. XML databases are a flavor of document- ...

(and it provides support for

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other ser ...

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

and Binary documents). Unlike most

relational database management system A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

s (RDBMS) and NoSQL databases, eXist-db provides

XQuery XQuery (XML Query) is a query and functional programming language that queries and transforms collections of structured and unstructured data, usually in the form of XML, text and with vendor-specific extensions for other data formats (JSON, bin ...

and

XSLT XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text or XSL Formatting Objects, which may subseque ...

as its query and application programming languages. eXist-db is released under version 2.1 of the

GNU LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

Features

eXist-db allows software developers to persist XML/JSON/Binary documents without writing extensive middleware. eXist-db follows and extends many

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

XML standards such as

. eXist-db also supports

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and entert ...

interfaces for interfacing with

AJAX Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Greek ...

-type web forms. Applications such as

XForms XForms is an XML format used for collecting inputs from web forms. XForms was designed to be the next generation of HTML / XHTML forms, but is generic enough that it can also be used in a standalone manner or with presentation languages other tha ...

may save their data by using just a few lines of code. The WebDAV interface to eXist-db allows users to "drag and drop" XML files directly into the eXist-db database. eXist-db automatically indexes documents using a keyword indexing system.

History

eXist-db was created in 2000 by Wolfgang Meier. eXist-db was awarded the best XML database of the year by

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its siste ...

in 2006. The companies eXist Solutions GmbH in Germany, and Evolved Binary in the UK, promote and provide support for the software. There is an O'Reilly book for eXist-db which is co-authored by Adam Retter and Erik Siegel.

Supported standards and technologies

eXist-db has support for the following standards and technologies: *

XPath XPath (XML Path Language) is an expression language designed to support the query or transformation of XML documents. It was defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and can be used to compute values (e.g., strings, numbers, or Boolean v ...

- XML Path language *

- XML Query language *

- Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations *

XSL-FO XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects) is a markup language for XML document formatting that is most often used to generate PDF files. XSL-FO is part of XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language), a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and ...

- XSL Formatting Objects *

WebDAV WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for concu ...

- Web distributed authoring and versioning *

- Representational state transfer (URL encoding) * RESTXQ - RESTful annotations for XQuery *

XInclude XInclude is a generic mechanism for merging XML documents, by writing inclusion tags in the "main" document to automatically include other documents or parts thereof. The resulting document becomes a single composite XML Information Set. The XInclud ...

- server-side include file processing (limited support) *

XML-RPC XML-RPC is a remote procedure call (RPC) protocol which uses XML to encode its calls and HTTP as a transport mechanism.Simon St. Laurent, Joe Johnston, Edd Dumbill. (June 2001) ''Programming Web Services with XML-RPC.'' O'Reilly. First Edition. ...

- a remote procedure call protocol *

XProc XProc is a W3C Recommendation to define an XML transformation language to define XML Pipelines. Below is an example abbreviated XProc file: This is a pipeline that consists of two atomic steps, XInclude and Val ...

- a XML Pipeline processing language *

XQuery API for Java XQuery API for Java (XQJ) refers to the common Java API for the W3C XQuery 1.0 specification. The XQJ API enables Java programmers to execute XQuery against an XML data source (e.g. an XML database) while reducing or eliminating Vendor lock-i ...

References

External links

* {{official website, http://www.exist-db.org Free database management systems XML databases Software using the LGPL license Database-related software for Linux Free software programmed in Java (programming language)

Features

History

Supported standards and technologies

See also

References

External links