Kimbro Staken announced a new release of dbXML, adding indexing, file storage, and API improvements to the native XML database.

dbXML 0.5, released like its recent predecessors under the LGPL license, is "designed to manage large collections of XML documents" and is "easily embedded into existing applications, highly configurable, and openly extensible."

New features for version 0.5 include:

"a new indexing system that supports full XPath, new file storage systems and significantly improved APIs and command line tools. This release also includes an early Core Level 1 implementation of the XML:DB XML Database API http://www.xmldb.org/xapi."

At the same time, dbXML Core has slimmed down to a smaller core:

"The parts of the system that were not of core importance to the database functionality have been moved into separate projects. This was done to remove large quantities of code that while useful was not directly related to the database engine."

Related stories:

• dbXML reaches 0.3
• Three independent companies give birth to XML:DB
• dbXML now Java and open source