I thought about it, but the schema doesn?t define the attributes well and they can change the schema at any time. We have to be able to react to any changes in the schema they throw at us. _____ From: Nigel Thomas [mailto:nigel.cl.thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2009 4:07 AM To: Michael McMullen; Oracle-L Freelists Subject: Re: clustered tables question 10g On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Michael McMullen <ganstadba@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I?m investigating whether it is appropriate to organize some of the tables into clusters, Michael Just a thought: if you're dealing with XML have you also considered the possible (though by no means certain) benefits of using XML DB to store the data? There are some similarities between using traditional clustered tables and storing (possibly shredded) XML into CLOBs or relational or object/relational tables. A good source of information is Oracle Ace Marco Gralike's blog. For example see his 2007 <http://www.liberidu.com/blog/images/oracle-11g-xmltype-storage-options.pdf> paper on XML storage options; his page linking to OTN <http://www.liberidu.com/blog/?page_id=241> discussions; his XMLDB <http://www.liberidu.com/blog/?cat=3> category, etc. (Disclaimer: My interest in this is theoretical,not practical; I've used Oracle XML functionality primarily for generating XML from relational, not the other way round). Regards Nigel