Future Directions

With the growth of the Internet and content-rich applications, it has become imperative that databases support a data type that fulfills the ability to store unstructured data. Unstructured data in this context is any information that does not include metadata about the data. These databases need to be optimized for large amounts of unstructured data and provide a uniform way of accessing large amounts of unstructured data within the database or outside.

Vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle will have to add additional functionality to their XML offerings to compete with each other. The APIs and tools they have developed will mature to become easier to implement and extend. As standards emerge and mature from the W3C and other consortiums, these will be integrated into their offerings as well.