HShreX - A Tool for Design and Evaluation of Hybrid XML Storage

XML is a commonly used data representation format for Web applications. One of the reasons for the attractiveness of XML is its flexibility to store unstructured, semi-structured and structured data.However, supporting this flexibility is challenging from a technical perspective and several approaches have been proposed for storage of XML. The focus of this paper is hybrid storage, combining relational and native solutions as it allows many alternatives for designing the data model. The paper presents our tool HShreX that enables quick design and evaluation of alternative choices by annotating the XML schema.The main benefit of the tool is that it is easy to work with and provides quick design of storage model and import of data. The paper describes the main features of the tool and a use case where we discuss how the tool can be used to design, compare and evaluate storage alternatives.