Chapter 4: New Features in Adaptive Server Version 12.5.1

Native XML query

The native XML query integrates the 12.5 XML/XPATH capabilities into Adaptive Server. The early prototypes have already shown remarkable performance improvements over the 12.5.0. Java processor. Completion of this project will enable Sybase to

Capitalize on such performance improvements
Remove the dependency on Java for using XML
Integrate the SQL and XML language levels

The XML query functions support the XML 1.0 standard for XML documents and the XPath 1.0 standard for XML queries. The book XML Services in Adaptive Server describes the subsets of those standards that “XML Services in Adaptive Server” supports.

Table 4-1 describes the SQL extensions for accessing and processing XML documents in SQL statements.

**Table 4-1: XML query functions**
Function	Description
xmlextract	A built-in function that applies an XML query expression to an XML document and returns the selected result.
xmltest	A SQL predicate that applies an XML query expression to an XML document and returns the Boolean result.
xmlparse	A built-in function that parses an XML document for more efficient processing.
xmlrepresentation	A built-in function that determines whether a given image column contains a parsed XML document.

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