Difference between an XMLType table and a table with an XMLType column?

Question

Hi all,
Still trying to get my mind around all this XML stuff.
Can someone concisely explain the difference between:
create table this_is_xmltype_tab of xmltype;and
create table this_is_tab_w_xmltpe_col(id number, document xmltype);What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of each approach? How do they really differ?
Thanks,
-Mark

Answer 1

There is another pointer Mark, that I realized when I was thinking about the differences...
If you would look up in the manual regarding "xdb:annotations" you would learn about a method using an XML Schema to generate out of the box your whole design in terms of physical layout and/or design principles. In my mind this should be the preferred solution if you are dealing with very complex XML Schema environments. Taking your XML Schema as your single point design layout, that during the actual implementation automatically generates and builds all your needed database objects and its physical requirements, has great advantages in points of design version management etc., but...
...it will create automatically an XMLType table (based on OR, Binary XML of "hybrid" storage principles, aka the ones that are XML Schema driven) and not AFAIK a XMLtype column structure: so as in "our" case a table with a id column and a xmltype column.
In principle you could relationally relate to this as:
+"I have created an EER diagram and a Physical diagram, I mix the content/info of those two into one diagram." "Then I _+execute+_ it in the database and the end result will be an database user/schema that has all the xxxx amount of physical objects I need, the way I want it to be...".+
...but it will be in the form of an XMLType table structure...
xdb:annotations can be used to create things like:
- enforce database/company naming conventions
- DOM validation enabled or not
- automatic IOT or BTree index creation (for instance in OR XMLType storage)
- sort search order enforced or not
- default tablenames and owners
- extra column or table property settings like for partitioning XML data
- database encoding/mapping used for SQL and binary storage
- avoid automatic creation of Oracle objects (tables/types/etc), for instance, via xdb:defaultTable="" annotations
- etc...
See here for more info: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/appdev.112/e10492/xdb05sto.htm#ADXDB4519
and / or for more detailed info:
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/appdev.112/e10492/xdb05sto.htm#i1030452
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/appdev.112/e10492/xdb05sto.htm#i1030995
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11882_01/appdev.112/e10492/xdb05sto.htm#CHDCEBAG
...