Need help modeling a taxonomy in XML

[Viraf Bankwalla]

Hi,

I would appreciate help / direction / references in determining whether XML is appropiate, and how to go about designing / implementing a solution to the following problem.  I am trying to represent a taxonomy using XML.  The taxonomy is 5 levels deep and each level may have several thousand terms.  Multiple views of the taxonomy will be available to the user - for example :

View 1           View 2
=========        =========

L1-a             L3-a
+-L2-a           +-L2-a
  +-L3-a         | +-L1-a
                 +-L2-b
                 | +-L1-b
                 +-L2-d

View 1 above shows the prefered path to the term.  View 2 shows a user selected term and it's parents.  As the nodes are multi-axial the path to each of the root(s) are shown.  The application also needs to be able to query the taxonony for terms.

The solution is currently implemented using a relational database.  How would one go about modeling this in XML and what tools are available to search / manage the taxonomy.  

When I initially looked at the problem it looked ideal for XML, however after having discovered that the nodes are multi-axial I'm not sure if XML or a relational database is the best solution.  

Any help would be useful.

Thanks.

-  vi



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