Industry formats provide agreed-upon ways to exchange information between and within companies. In the financial areas, industry formats include ACORD for insurance, FpML for financial derivatives, FIXML for financial trading, and MISMO for mortgages. Other industry formats are used in federal government applications (such as GJXDM) and health care applications (such as HL7). The XML messages being exchanged are often stored for a variety of purposes, such as auditing, tracking, and querying.

Many organizations devote considerable programming effort to mapping these industry formats into relational data for storing in databases. Each time the format changes, new mappings must be devised and additional programming is required.

DB2® pureXML™ provides the ability to store, update, delete, query, and index well-formed XML. Users can retrieve entire XML documents or document fragments by incorporating XPath, XQuery, and SQL into queries. Users can also register XML schemas and instruct DB2 to validate XML documents against these schemas.

This demonstration (Industry Formats and Services with pureXML at http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/DB2pureXMLDemo/Demo.html) illustrates how XML in particular industry formats can be stored and queried in pureXML databases in a straightforward way without mapping. Furthermore, it shows how the data can be retrieved through Web services, RESTful services, feeds, and XForms. Various industry bundles (quick-start industry samples), which are available through the Download Now link, show how to store and query XML in DB2 pureXML.

How does it work?

The demonstration and samples illustrate how well-formed XML messages can be stored and queried in a DB2 pureXML database. They also show how a generic service layer can be created to enable access to the stored messages in a variety of ways by exposing a simple set of CRUD (Create, Replace, Update, Delete) and Query services. Other ways of accessing the data, such as through atom feeds and XForms, are illustrated. The XForms use the exposed generic CRUD and Query services to access the stored messages.

This demonstration uses DB2 pureXML columns (collections of XML) to store XML messages. Access to the stored XML is enabled through generic servlets, stored procedures, and a WebSphere® Application Server.

The demonstration currently includes several industry formats, each stored a DB2 pureXML column in a separate database table. All the industry formats are manipulated in similar ways, such as through XForms, Web services, or Atom feeds. These types of manipulation illustrate the ease with which additional XML formats can be introduced into a system. If the structure of the XML format evolves, it can continue to be stored in the same table without any significant modifications, such as re-mapping.

For an explanation of how to navigate around the demonstration, please see Getting Started with the Demo (PDF format). For further information about the demonstration and downloads, please see the article Get started with Industry Formats and Services with pureXML.

Anke Diderich is an intern from the University of Rostock in Germany. At IBM®, Ms. Diderich is working on integration of XML and databases in the DB2 XML team.

Susan Malaika, senior technical staff member, has been an IBM Academy of Technology member since 1995. She co-edited a book about the Web in 1996. Ms. Malaika has worked in DB2 since 1998; she specializes in XML and Web technologies, including grid computing.

Andy B. Smith has been involved with application design and development of Web, portal, J2EE, and messaging solutions since 1998. He works as a software engineer with IBM Emerging Standards in RTP, N.C., and is currently focused on XML and Web-based technologies.

Keith Wells is a software engineer with IBM in RTP, N.C. Mr. Wells has been involved with Emerging Technologies and the Emerging Technologies Toolkit for several years. Currently, he is exploring opportunities with XForms, compound documents, model-driven development, software standards, and XML-based technologies.

Ronny Bartsch, Jan Kratky, Henning Masuch, Demai Ni, Christian Pichler, Vitor Rodrigues, Jeffrey Rodriguez, Stefan Rybacki, and Manoj Sardana also contributed to this technology.