Teradata XML Services provide assistance in database transformation of XML structures to and from relational structures. This is primarily an enterprise fit feature. XML in this context is regarded as a data format that is used to describe incoming or outgoing warehouse data. A key concept for this feature is that we are not transforming to store XML but rather to maintain a relational data model or to integrate relational data into an enterprise XML message structure! The relational data model is bested suited for enterprise analytics. XML structures are best suited for enterprise integration.

Teradata XML Services is supported on Database Versions 13, 13.10 and 14. As of Teradata Database version 14.10, much of the XML Services functionality has been implemented as part of the XML data type in the database, and Teradata XML Services as a separate download will not be supported for 14.10 and future versions. Mappings created for XML shredding and publishing can be used for 14.10 as well (except for XSLT shredding),  but the names of the stored procedures will change. Please see the Teradata XML book in the database user documentation for further details.

This feature will be delivered asynchronously from any specific Teradata warehouse release. The delivery format will be as a web download, available for each Teradata server platform. The feature is considered a part of the Teradata product and will be supported through normal support channels.

Teradata XML Services consists of the following components:

1. Xerces XML parser and Xalan XSLT transformer packaged as a platform specific operating system library.
2. Shredding Framework which consists of a combination of stored procedures and functions. A stored procedure controls the shredding process. When shredding one to a few documents the stored procedure directly invokes the data maintenance DML. When shredding many documents, the stored procedure uses a set-based approach through the invocation of a table generation function.
3. Parallel Publishing Framework which consists of a combination of stored procedures and functions. A stored procedure will control the publishing process. The stored procedure can either return a string representing an XML object type or a SQL statement that represents the XML data stream. The SQL statement can be reused in views, macros, fast export, etc.
4. General purpose XSLT transformation function.
5. Two XPATH search functions, one that returns a scalar character value and one that returns an XML fragment character value.
6. XML schema validation function.
7. XML Schema and Stylesheet loading and dependency resolution.
8. XML schema generation procedures.
9. Perl based installation process.

For community-based support and to share your implementation ideas and concerns, please visit the Extensibility forum.