Database Reference
In-Depth Information
A native XML database server
eXist can be deployed as a native XML database server, allowing you to store and
manage both XML and binary documents and perform queries upon these docu‐
ments across a network. This approach is similar to a classic client/server net‐
worked database architecture.
A web application platform
Building upon the preceding item, eXist offers so many web-oriented features
and capabilities that they deserve mentioning in their own right. You can build
entire web applications by writing very simple and powerful high-level web
application code in XQuery, XForms, and XSLT, and eXist will provide the
HTTP glue to serve these up as complete web applications.
Embedded Architecture
If you choose to embed eXist directly in your own application (see “Local APIs” on
page 364 ), eXist operates as any other third-party library would; that is, you make func‐
tion calls in your application upon the classes that make up eXist in order to perform
various operations. When eXist is embedded in your application, you have two local
APIs to choose from—either the XML:DB Local API (see “XML:DB Local API” on
page 366 ) or the Fluent API (see “Fluent API” on page 369 ).
It is also possible to directly call eXist's internal API functions;
however, this is strongly discouraged, as you are then responsible
for the correct locking and transaction management of resources,
which is nontrivial to achieve correctly. In addition, these API
functions are subject to change at any time.
Embedding eXist within your application (as shown in Figure 4-3 ) can be a suitable
choice if you wish to release a convenient standalone application to your users that
has advanced XML processing and query facilities.
Figure 4-3. JVM-embedded eXist architecture
 
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