We describe a largely complete and efficient XQuery to SQL translation for XML publishing. Our translation supports the entire XQuery language, except for functions, if statements and upwards navigation axes. The system has three important properties. First, it preserves the correct XQuery semantics. This is accomplished by first translating XQuery into core-XQuery, using a complete XQuery implementation, Galax. Second, we optimize the resulting SQL queries. We develop a comprehensive framework for optimizing the XQuery to SQL translation, which is effective for a wide range of XQuery workloads. Third, our translation is platform independent. Our system achieves high degree of efficiency on a wide range of relational systems. This paper reports an extensive experimental validation on several XQuery workloads, using MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server, and compares this approach with five native XQuery engines: Galax (the newer, optimized version), Saxon, QizOpen, IMDB and Quexo
