Database Reference
In-Depth Information
• Security was reorganized and now works not only a lot faster, but also in a way
most developers are comfortable with (i.e., similar to Unix-like systems).
• The repository manager was added, opening the way to a more modular eXist.
• RESTXQ, a standard for coupling function invocations to URLs, was added.
• And, of course, numerous other small improvements were made.
The final version 2.0, released in February 2013, was a massive leap forward from 1.4,
representing the culmination of more than three years' worth of sustained develop‐
ment effort. As such, it was not completely without backward compatibility prob‐
lems. For instance, existing XQuery applications will have to do something about
their security settings before they can run on the new version. However, that's not
too hard and is well worthwhile.
Version 2.1 was released shortly after, in July 2013, and consisted mostly of bug fixes
and a new version of eXide. In February 2014, a release candidate of eXist 2.2 was
made available, which—along with the usual bug fixes—included a completely new
range index based on Lucene that offered much improved query times.
It is expected that eXist will keep evolving. The plans are to move more and more
toward a core product with separate modules, enabling adding à la carte functionality
as needed.
Competitors
Now, obviously we are passionate about eXist; otherwise, you would not be reading a
topic we have written on the subject. More importantly, though, we are passionate
about open source, and even more so we are concerned with quality software and
using the right tool for the job. Like any other product, eXist has both strengths and
weaknesses, and it would be somewhat misleading if we were not to share the whole
story with you. Pointing out the weaknesses of a software product for which you have
bought a topic may not help us sell more topics, but we do hope it will help you make
informed decisions.
As eXist has such a wide scope, it is impossible to compare it directly to other prod‐
ucts; so, we compare it instead against other native XML databases that also couple
web server and application platform capabilities.
eXist's competitors can be split into two categories: those that are open source and
freely available, and the closed source, commercial offerings. By no means is what fol‐
lows a complete list, but it contains the offerings that we believe are popular and fre‐
quently encounter when talking to others.
A further independent comparison is available in the
XML database article on
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