Why use eXist-db?

Day 10 Session 02 slot 01

We start with the question When to use XML?:

Answer: When you work with hierarchical data where sequence is important.

What is eXist-db?

• XML native database (https://exist-db.org/)
• XML Schema for validation
• Easily supports hierarchical relations via XQuery/XPath
• Documented in it self
• XForms -> reusable web components
• Full stack app platform

Features

• The Lucene Full-Text Indexing is robust and performant.
  • It includes configurable analyzers and parameters,
  • and additional functions for working with Lucene document fields.
  • Lucene indexing of binary files (conentent extraction), e.g. pdf
• eXide editing, app development, package management (xar archives) and repository installation (hot deploy) of these packages
• svn/git extension, working copy/repo in db etc
• web log extension atomic, publish atom feeds
• new authentication and access restriction model, allowing openid, oauth, ldap etc
• A vibrant community

eXist-db hard facts

• Almost 20 years since inception
• Around 40 stable releases

• 600K lines of code

• Estimated 250+ person years of effort, and around 16M EUR development cost

Packaged together as one experience

• Combining the powers of XML, XQuery with full text extensions, XForms, Atom publishing protocol (add more W3C standards) and XAR package management bring you a new level of convenience.
• Using the eXist-db XML database and eXide (eXist-db integrated development environment) for web application development you have this packaged together as one experience.

Apps (a selection)

I already showed you a few already. Usually the answer is there is an app for that, since eXist-db is probably the most feature rich XML database in the world. :)

• TEI publisher
  • Building a sharing community around it too, EEditiones
• Geospatial index
• Function documentation
• Charting
• Sparql + xml-serialized RDF index app
• TEI graphing app
• OCR app
• NER + Stanford CoreNLP
• And more

[I show some old slides for images here.]