Oracle provides you with differing strategies to map XML documents into a database schema. Since XML is an enabling technology and not an application, there is no one strategy that will work optimally for all scenarios. XML is an abstraction born from the need to exchange content or data in an interoperable manner. XML’s cost is the increased overhead to process its structure and tags, thus your correct selection of XML storage model will have a significant performance impact on your application. In later chapters, we will walk you through the process of using each of these strategies with appropriate example applications.