From: Elizabeth Hinson [mailto:elhinson@r...]
I'm involved in a project to develop a medical database for clinical images. We are considering Filemaker 6.0 (which is for the non-professional, much like Access, but has the ability to export and import XML). I understand all the big guys too handle XML. But someone told me that XML itself CAN be used as a database. Then I heard about "Native XML Databases" or NXDs. But reading further I got confused. There seem to be 2 camps: those in favor of traditional databases with XML support, and the pure XML folks.

What would you recommend? Which is better (for medical data)?

Maybe the answer is "neither"!  Have you thought about using WebDAV on top of an XML database or other storage medium?  If what you need is storage, access, and metadata queries (WebDAV properties are XML), it would provide everything that you're after.

    -- Paul