Metadata Repository in XML?

[Ravi Srinivas]

Hi,
Ok so this isnt the place to ask this question, but still hoping for an answer..
I'm in a Data Warehousing place and we're considering building our own repository to centrally store metadata from ETL, OLAP tools, Warehouse etc. I feel there are 3 options where we can store the metadata-
1. As XML file(s) (heard that there is a trend towards this option)
2. Relational database (seems to be the more popular option)
3. Object-oriented database (not well known yet)
Can anyone tell me what are the pros and cons of using each option?
Thanks a lot,
Ravi

[William Brogden]

There is indeed a lot of activity on XML for open-ended data representation. For example I recently got a book "XML Topic Maps" and there is a huge amount of activity at the W3C on things like the "Semantic Web".
I really can't see using 2 or 3 for a project that is just starting to evolve - you would constantly be redesigning your tables or objects as people came up with ideas.
Bill

[Balaji Loganathan]

Originally posted by Ravi Srinivas:
1. As XML file(s) (heard that there is a trend towards this option)
2. Relational database (seems to be the more popular option)
Ravi

I support the first two options.
I will consider using XML if i have to do frequent data exchange between non-related non-unique OS and softwares, if not relational db is the best option to avoid processing overhead with XML.
Correct me if i'm wrong