In this chapter, we introduced you to the SQL XMLType and PL/SQL XML functionality within Oracle Database 10g and showed you through several examples how to use the functions to process XML data in the Oracle database. The easy-to-use SQL functions should be your first choice when processing XML in Oracle Database 10g. You should use the PL/SQL XML processing APIs only when you require fine-grained XML processing of XML documents that is not available in the SQL/XML or XMLType functions.