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XML has become the standard for exchanging information between disparate systems because it is easily transformed into any format. The good news is that the four leading relational databases not only can store XML data, but they hide much of the complexity of working with XML. Oracle Database 10g breaks new ground in support for XML technology, offering very rich features for importing, storing, querying, and generating XML data. Like Oracle Database, IBM's DB2 allows you to store structured XML, unstructured documents, or shredded data. Sybase ASE has a native XML database that allows storage of shredded, structured, and unstructured XML data. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 falls glaringly short of Oracle, IBM, and Sybase when handling XML. As an XML-enabled database, SQL Server only allows you to store XML documents as unstructured objects in the database or to shred the XML data into relational tables.