Chapter 7. Hierarchical Data and the Relational Database
Hierarchical data is organized as an expandable tree structure of elements (or nodes), each one nested within another, to form parent-child relationships on multiple levels. In today’s world, the most ubiquitous hierarchical data format is XML (we cover Microsoft SQL Server’s rich XML support in Chapter 6). There’s no doubt that XML is the right database storage choice for hierarchical data in many scenarios. It can be particularly useful when that data is consumed in XML format by client applications, in circumstances where you need to store and retrieve the entire hierarchy at a single time, or when you want to implement a loosely structured storage schema that can change ...
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