XML is of growing importance in a range of computer applications. In addition to being a document exchange format it is now commonly used for data storage and retrieval as well. While XML offers great potential to unite data exchange and storage, it is expensive to process data stored in textual format. The document object model (DOM) defines convenient means to access XML data, but many implementations struggle with performance limitations. The data model implied by the standard needs new data structures and adapted query algorithms to enable native XML databases to perform acceptably. This introduction describes a preliminary data structure developed with these objectives in mind. It also gives an overview of our future research directions and anticipated problems
