Fusing SQL and XQuery to Combine XML and Relational Data for Reporting

There is a lot of talk these days about harnessing content for use in business intelligence.  This is something we've been enabling for some time at Ipedo, but it seems like more and more people are having the need/becoming aware of the possibilities.

Generally speaking, there are two types of content people are interested in - search results from textual documents and access to documents represented as XML.  I know, I know, there are more than that.  But if you look at what people are actually using, I contend they are looking to utilize search results on Web and/or Microsoft Office documents; or they want to search and extract information from semi-structured XML documents, which are usually forms, industry schemas (MISMO, FpML, ACORD et al), or transformed Microsoft Word or Excel.

So I want to show you something really cool.  Take a look at the picture below, which shows how you can use SQL to query semi-structured XML documents.  Perfect for BI.

 

The magic is our Dual-Core Query Engine that marries SQL and XQuery.  We have something called XML Tables that make XML documents look like relational tables.  So you can query a bunch of XML documents using SQL and manipulate it in a reporting tool like Crystal Reports.  Or you can query a combination of relational and XML sources using SQL and manipulate in Crystal et al.

If you want to see something live, you can also see how this same technology works against combinations of relational and Web Services data here.