Latest News

We are pleased to announce the version 3.5 of the Sedna XML database system.

New Features:

• Native implementation of full-text indices. Now dtSearch is not necessary to create and query full-text indices. For details refer to the Sedna Programmer's Guide, Managing Full-Text Indices section.
• CDATA section formatting is now saved for text nodes in direct element constructors and can be saved during bulk load using special option:

  	declare option se:bulk-load "cdata-section-preserve=yes";

  See Sedna Programmer's Guide, Bulk Load section for further details.
• XQuery serialization output option cdata-section-elements is now supported. It specifies list of elements names. Content of these elements is serialized wrapped in CDATA.
• New listen-address Sedna server option. This option specifies an address that Sedna server will accept clients connections on. It can be specified as IP numeric value or host name.

  Note: the default value for this option is localhost and it makes Sedna 3.5 operate NOT in the same way it did before. Check Administration Guide, Running Sedna section, listen-address option description for details. To make Sedna behave as previous releases (not recommended) specify 0.0.0.0 value

• Internal data representation optimization: database now takes less hard disk space.
• Bug fixes, small improvements and optimizations. Including completely rewritten distinct-values XQuery function.

Official Drivers Changes:

• PHP driver version 2.2 is available. Includes critical bug fixes.

New Contributions:

• Eric Jones shared initial version of Haskell bindings.
• BlackBox subsytem for Sedna released.

Important Note: Databases created with previous versions of Sedna will not work properly with Sedna 3.5. Please, use Sedna import/export (se_exp) utility to migrate your data to Sedna 3.5 (see Administration Guide, Export/Import Utility).

We are pleased to announce the version 3.4 of the Sedna XML database system.

Important Note for Drivers Developers:

Please check that your drivers are compatible with Sedna 3.4.

Sedna C library (libsedna) naming scheme has changed on Unix-like systems. libsedna.a is not built with PIC anymore. All high level drivers which depend on libsedna most likely should be linked with libsedna_pic.a (static with PIC) or libsedna.so (dynamic) instead of libsedna.a (static without PIC).

Significant Changes and New Features:

• 64-bit native support: 64-bit binaries are now available for all supported platforms.
• CMake cross-platform build system is now used to build Sedna on all supported platforms (e.g. Visual Studio project can be generated on Windows). See Sedna Installation Guide for details on configuration and installation process.
• libedit support on FreeBSD: Sedna Terminal (se_term) on FreeBSD is now enhanced with auto-completion, history and advanced editing facilities.
• Storage Manager IO optimization: significant increase of bulk load speed and other IO bound updates and queries.
• Internal data representation optimization: database now takes less hard disk space.
• Reduced log mode (LOG_LESS_MODE) behaviour changed: transaction enters exclusive mode (there are no other concurrent transactions possible) when log-less mode is turned on.
• Sedna C library naming scheme changed on Unix-like platforms. There are three versions of library are available now: libsedna.so (dynamic), libsedna.a (static), libsedna_pic.a (static with PIC enabled).
• System document $modules returned. It can be used to list names of all available modules.
• Linux kernel 2.4 support dropped.
• Bug fixes, small improvements and optimizations.
• The official Sedna source code repository was migrated from Darcs to Git:
  • use gitweb to track changes
  • use git clone git://modis.ispras.ru/sedna to obtain a copy of the official repository.

Official Drivers Changes:

• New version of the PHP driver by Sedna Team is available. Changes include support for Sedna 3.4, support for all session options available via C API, precompiled binaries for Windows for various versions of PHP, small fixes and improvements.
• New version of the Python driver by Sedna Team is available. Changes include support for Sedna 3.4, multithreading and other small fixes.

Important Note: Databases created with previous versions of Sedna will not work properly with Sedna 3.4. Please, use Sedna import/export (se_exp) utility to migrate your data to Sedna 3.4 (see Administration Guide, Export/Import Utility).

XDIB (XML Database In a Browser), taking inspiration from XQIB ("XQuery in a Browser"), allows use by websites of an open source native XML database (called Sedna) in Firefox (and perhaps other browsers in the future if there is interest in standardization), with access to the databases currently open to any site which obtains permission from the user.

For further details refer to the add-on site: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/199900/

Thanks, Brett, for this contribution!

Ilya Taranov gave a talk at SIGMOD 2010 with Sedna: Native XML Database Management System (Internals Overview) paper. Video version of this presentaion is available on YouTube.

Talk outline:

• General Architecture Overview
• Internal Storage Representation
• Memory Management
• Transactions Management
• Query Execution

Felix Winkelmann updated the Sedna extension in Chicken's repository. To use Sedna with CHICKEN download and install the Sedna API semiautomatically by executing:

% chicken-install sedna

If it has been installed, evaluating:

(use sedna)

will load the Sedna API and import it in one step.

Daniel Ruoso finally published Perl Driver for Sedna on CPAN, and it's now available to any Perl developer. The driver implements the C API directly as-is.

http://search.cpan.org/~druoso/Sedna-0.001/lib/Sedna.pm

Additionally, an adapter model class for the Catalyst framework was released, so people can use it integrated with their application:

http://search.cpan.org/~druoso/Catalyst-Model-Sedna-0.001/lib/Catalyst/Model/Sedna.pm

Many thanks to Daniel!

We are pleased to announce the version 3.3 of the Sedna XML database system.

Significant Changes and New Features:

• Query Explain Statement: shows execution plan of the XQuery or update statement.
• Query Profile Statement: profiles XQuery or update statement, shows execution time, number of calls for each physical operation in the execution plan.
• Improved Errors Diagnostic: Sedna now reports details of XQuery/XUpdate execution errors with both line and column numbers in the source query code.
• Version 4 of the Client/Server Protocol: each query result item contains XQuery Data Model type.
• Completely C/C++ source code: Sedna now doesn't contain sources in Scheme!

Other Changes:

• Metadata system document $modules removed. Use collection $modules instead to get names of all modules.
• We do not have resources to deliver Mac OS (Darwin) PowerPC binary releases and night builds. However, we will be very glad if someone has ability to create Darwin's PPC build.
• As usual, Sedna 3.3 build includes a lot of bug fixes, improvements and optimizations.

Important note: Databases created with previous versions of Sedna will not work properly with Sedna 3.3. Please, use Sedna import/export utility to migrate your data to Sedna 3.3 (see Administration Guide, section 2.5).

Charles Foster released the first beta version of the XQJ driver for Sedna.

Basic features include:

• Conforms against the XQJ Test Compatibility Kit.
• Supports binding XQuery external variables from Java.
• Supports deferred binding of external variables (Stream XML to Sedna).
• Supports binding of XQuery static context items from Java.
• Onboard Ultra-high performance StAX Processor.
• No dependencies on other Java libraries and relatively light-weight!

Sedna XQJ API: http://www.cfoster.net/sedna/xqj/

XQJ Tutorial: http://www.cfoster.net/articles/xqj-tutorial/

Note: this is an EARLY RELEASE BETA, please report bugs at: http://www.cfoster.net/contact

We are pleased to announce a version 3.2 of the Sedna XML database system.

New:

• Persistent heap discarded. All metadata is stored just the same way as data does. CDB option -persistent-heap-size removed.
• Completely rewritten parser (in Flex/Bison). Means slightly improved XQuery conformancy and much easier enhancement in the future.
• Deadlock detection algorithm was rewritten.

Important note: Databases created with previous versions of Sedna will not work properly with Sedna 3.2. Please, use Sedna import/export utility to migrate your data to Sedna 3.2 (see Administration Guide, section 2.5).

CFXQuery is a project to encourage the use of XML based DBMS. At the moment this is achieved by the provision of a robust, enterprise level XMLDBMS along with a set of ColdFusion libraries and components to interface to it.

Project's site: http://www.cfxquery.co.uk/

Download: http://www.cfxquery.co.uk/CF-XQuery-downloads.html

GREaT team has contributed Sedna Admin for Web 0.1.

Suggestions, bug-reports, contributions and/or just some feedback: sednaadmin at great.ufc.br.

Sedna 3.1.175 is available for download.

New Features:

• SEDNA_LOG_AMMOUNT option for driver and corresponding \LOG_LESS_MODE for terminal. These options allow severely reduced logical log size during bulk-loads at the expense of longer commits.
• Sedna Terminal has been improved. Firstly, there is tab-completion for commands and queries in Linux, Mac OS, Solaris. Secondly, some commands have got aliases (for example, \q instead of \quit; for details see Sedna Administarion Guide, section 2.4 Sedna Terminal or type \set? in Sedna terminal). Thirdly, there is history now in Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, which is saved in terminal user's home directory.
• Added new option to stop Sedna. Use se_stop -hard command to rollback all running transactions immediately.

Other Changes:

• PHP driver documentation was updated to get rid of building PHP sources (download).
• New public Sedna bug tracker is available.

New Contributions:

• Alex Reznichenko contributed Sedna and PHP driver packages for Archlinux.
• Jim Washington released Sedna Protocol for Kamaelia.

Thanks to Alex and Jim!

As usual, build contains bug fixes, small improvements and optimizations.

Sedna 3.1.126 is available for download.

New Features:

• Full Support for Solaris (x86) operating system. Binaries and sources for Solaris are available at the download page.
• Keep Alive Timeout option. It specifies number of seconds session waits for the next request from the same client on the same connection.
• Two new options to tune logical log file size (log-file-size) and count (max-log-files). This allows more control on recovery and logical log size.
• Windows C API library is now provided in multiple versions: static /MT, static /MD and dynamic (see Programmer's Guide, section 1.2 for details).

Significant Changes:

• init_phys_log_size and phys_log_ext_portion se_cdb options have been removed.
• Sedna C driver can be compiled independently under x86 and x64 platfroms. This can be convenient when someone needs to build C API wrapper (e.g. PHP, Python drivers). Refer to the FAQ for details.

New Contributions:

• Ruby API for Sedna v0.2 by Rolf Timmermans (home page).
• Delphi API by Sedna by Alexander Kardailsky (download).

Thanks to Rolf and Alexander!

Build also contains bug fixes, a number of small improvements and optimizations.

Driver is made as a wrapper around the C API dynamic library and has been tested with delphi 2007 and delphi 2009. Package is provided with examples which cover all the functionality.

You can find Delphi driver at our download page.

Thanks to Alexander!

From the site:

"This library provides a Ruby client for Sedna, an open-source, native XML database system. The client is a Ruby extension that uses the official C driver that is shipped as part of the Sedna distribution."

You can find Ruby API driver as well as documentation at the official project's home page: http://sedna.rubyforge.org.

Thanks to Rolf!

We are pleased to announce a version 3.1 of the Sedna XML database system.

New:

• Incremental hot backup
• Rename collection statement
• Bug fixes and small improvements

Important note: Databases created with previous versions of Sedna will not work properly with Sedna 3.1. Please, use Sedna import/export utility to migrate your data to Sedna 3.1 (see Administration Guide, section 2.5).

http://sednaadmin.sf.net

New Features:

• Manager Index, Collections and User
• Import, Export and Restore Options
• Syntax Highlight (started)

Suggestions, bug-reports, contributions and/ or just some feedback: sednaadmin@great.ufc.br

We are pleased to announce a Sedna-based demo which allows you to query Wikipedia in XQuery.

http://wikixmldb.org

We have parsed English Wikipedia into a well-structured XML document (21 Gb in size) and loaded it into Sedna. Now you can run predefined and your own XQuery queries via Web interface.

Enjoy it!

We are pleased to announce a version 3.0 of the Sedna XML database system.

New:

• Improved transaction management
  Sedna now use (page-level) versioning mechanism which provides the following benefits:
  • Now you can define a transaction as read-only by setting SEDNA_ATTR_CONCURRENCY_TYPE connection attribute in Sedna API (see Programmer's Guide, section 1.2.2). Read-only transaction does not conflict with any other concurrent transactions (including write transactions) as it is run on its own consistent set of versions of pages (called database snapshot). For serializing write transactions, the standard two-phase locking mechanism is used (as in previous versions of Sedna).
  • Physical logging based recovery used in the previous versions of Sedna is now replaced with a new version-based recovery. As the new implementation is much more simple and localized in a single component of Sedna (i.e. storage manager - se_sm) recovery is now very stable - Sedna should recover after any soft fault or incorrect system shutdown.
• Support for Mac OS X 10.4 and higher (PPC/Intel)
  You can use Sedna sources for Linux distribution to compile and install Sedna under Mac OS X 10.4 or higher (PPC/Intel). Note: Sedna can be compiled only on 32-bit platform using gcc 3.3, gcc 4.1 or higher. gcc 4.0.1 is not supported.
• Query execution timeout
  The timeout can be set in Sedna Terminal using '\set QUERY_TIMEOUT' (see Administration Guide, section 2.4) or directly through Sedna API using SEDNA_ATTR_QUERY_EXEC_TIMEOUT connection attribute (see Programmer's Guide, section 1.2.2). If set, the transaction which lasts longer than the timeout will be rolled back automatically. By default there is no any timeout.
• Database security feature is divided into two parts: support for client authentication and support for database users and privileges. For better flexibility these features now can be set on/off during database creation with se_cdb. By default, database is created with support for client authentication and without support for database users and privileges.
• Many bug fixes

Important note: Databases created with previous versions of Sedna will not work properly with Sedna 3.0. Please, use Sedna import/export utility to migrate your data to Sedna 3.0 (see Administration Guide, section 2.5).

New third-party contributions:

• zif.sedna - Python API with support for Zope 3 by Jim Washington (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/)
• XML:DB Driver For Java by Charles Foster (http://www.cfoster.net/sedna/)

We are glad to announce new Python adapter for Sedna - zif.sedna. This adapter has been contributed by Jim Washington.

zif.sedna provides a dbapi-like interface to Sedna (connections and cursors). It also provides a Zope 3 adapter with connection pooling. It is provisionally thread-safe.

You can download zif.sedna from the Python Cheese Shop: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/

Sedna team thanks Jim!

This driver is based on C API so it is quite efficient. It is used by Sedna team in a number of projects. Tested on Linux and Windows. Download here.

New:

• XQuery triggers
  • Sedna now provides support for triggers natively based on XPath/XQuery and the Sedna XML update language (see Programmer's Guide for details)
• Improved diagnostic of dynamic errors in XQuery/update statements
• Root privileges are no longer necessary to run Sedna on Linux
• Bug fixes:
  • correct Sedna shut down on Windows restart
  • every session process now needs significantly less memory when running
• Comprehensive testing now covers Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Important note: Databases created with previous versions of Sedna will not work properly with Sedna 2.2. Please, use Sedna import/export utility to migrate your data to Sedna 2.2 (see Administration Guide, section 2.5).

Charles Foster has released XML:DB Driver For Java version 1.1

Sedna XML:DB API 1.1: http://www.cfoster.net/sedna/

• New: Underlying Database Socket connections now pooled:
  - Inactive underlying Socket connections can be reused / recycled.
  - Closes abandoned Sockets (Collections unclosed by user)
• New: Support for Custom XML:DB Service plugins
• Fixed: Issues with XML:DB TransactionService
• Fixed: XML document storage/retrieval UTF-8 encoding issue
  - Thanks to Ivan Shcheklein and Sergei Ganin
• Fixed: Client/Server communication was not thread safe
• Fixed: Could not retrieve large XML Resource Set Items / Documents
• Fixed: Failed when uploading a document with root node "html"
• Fixed: HAD to resolve external XML entities / DTDs to function
• New: Can now change Sedna XML:DB Internal DOM/SAX Parser properties
• New: More example source files on how to use Sedna XML:DB
• New: What's new log added
• Updated: Documentation PDF

Included in this version is an underlying Database Connection Pooling Manager, it works in a very similar fashion to the way Apache Tomcat deals with JNDI/JDBC datasources. Because of this underlying Database Connection Pool management, Sedna XML:DB 1.1 can withstand great amounts of usage stress and is suitable to be placed in environments where updates, inserts and queries can be very frequent, e.g. a Servlet / JSP. For instance, if a JSP/Servlet is hit 100 times a second and the JSP/Servlet's job is to query, update and insert documents into Sedna. The Sedna XML:DB API 1.1 will process all requests successfully without fail.

Using an API without Database Connection Pool management would result in some requests being successfull, but most unsuccessfull due to Sedna refusing a connection (by default Sedna can cope with a maximum of 50 concurrent connections).

As of writing this post, Sedna XML:DB API 1.1 is the only API for Sedna with a Database Connection Pool manager.

Sedna XML:DB 1.1 is completley compatible with XMLdbGUI - a Java Swing application which allows you to use/control an XML Database which supports an XML:DB API.

Sedna XML:DB 1.1 should also be able to work with the very popular Apache Cocoon.

Changes:

• Further indexes optimization;
• Further bulk load optimization;
• A lot of bug fixes and small improvments.

Important note! Use export utility (see Administration Guide, section 2.5) to convert Sedna's 2.0 (or earlier) databases into Sedna 2.1 format.

We are pleased to announce a version 2.0 of the Sedna XML database system.

New:

• XQuery support now conforms to the XQuery specification. Sedna passes "XML Query Test Suite (XQTS)" by W3C and has official "almost passed" status. The detailed report can be found here.
• Optional XQuery features:
  • Support for user-defined XQuery modules. Modules are stored at server side as precompiled functions
  • Full Axis (i.e. support for all XPath axes)
• XQuery debug facilities:
  • support for standard fn:trace function
  • facility to obtain stack trace in case of dynamic error
• Server configuration options are extended (e.g. you can configure several instances of Sedna server to be running on a computer)

New third-party contributions:

• Sedna Admin GUI by GREaT team
• Python API based on DBAPI 2.0 by Steve Howe
• PHP API by Nikolay Zavaritsky (avaliable from the Sedna download page)

Thank you for your valuable contributions!

GREaT team (CS department, Federal University Of Ceará) released the first version of Sedna Admin GUI tool.

Features:

• Support for Sedna 1.0.x
• Manage some aspects of databases
• Easy data manipulation
• Execute XQuery and Update extensions
• Easy to install and configure

More infomation can be found at Sedna Admin home page. Thanks to GREaT team!

Nicolas Tsokas has contributed Sedna C API (version 1.0.150) library and project for Borland C++ Builder 6.0. It is available from the Sedna download page. Thanks to Nicolas!

Nguyen Viet Cuong has written "Review of Sedna, Ozone, NeoCoreXMS". The review includes a comparison of the systems. In this comparison Sedna has the highest overall rating 8/10 (Ozone - 6/10, NeoCoreXMS - 7/10).

GRE publishing company uses Sedna as the core component in its content management solution which is used to develop advanced information products based on encyclopedias and references. In this solution Sedna provides single-source publishing, powerful content reuse, superior search and navigation, and great flexibility in information products customization.

We are pleased to announce a version 1.0 of the Sedna XML database system.

Sedna is being developed since early 2003. It is our sixth release (previous releases were 0.1-0.5). Now Sedna has a quite complete set of features required for a database system.

New:

• Recovery
• XQuery extended with support for: date, time, duration functions; all XPath axes; expressions on SequenceTypes (Instance Of, Typeswitch, Castable, Treat), Order By
• The XQuery functions position(), last() are optimized
• Event Log
• Backup and Restore Utilities
• Integration with dtSearch (http://www.dtsearch.com), a commercial text retrieval engine (not included in the distributive, please contact us to get information on this feature)
• Bug fixes

University of Alberta's Office of the Provost has developed and deployed a database application for searching academic awards and the University's recipients of these awards, using the Sedna XML database. The information in the awards database is stored and indexed in Sedna XML database to provide powerful search capabilities available. The content of the awards database can be edited via internal administrative interface powered by Sedna update facilities. You can visit the database here.

OmniMark version 8, the world's leading Content Processing platform, includes support for Sedna via the OmniMark database interface library (OMDB). Integrating Sedna support into OmniMark allows OmniMark developers to leverage the full power of XQuery and XML databases in content engineering applications. More information on Sedna and OmniMark integration can be found at:

• OmniMark release notes
• OmniMark documentation

Felix Winkelmann has packaged Sedna API driver as Chicken egg. Many thanks to Felix.

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