1. A computer program product comprising: one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media; and program instructions stored on the one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media, the program instructions comprising: program instructions to receive a pending update list, said pending update list including a first plurality of items, said first plurality of items being associated with an update to a hierarchically structured document, said hierarchically structured document being an extended markup language document; program instructions to add each of said first plurality of items to a subsumed update list, said subsumed update list including a second plurality of items, said subsumed update list being ordered based on at least a document order and a target node, said target node being for of each of said second plurality of items, and wherein the program instructions to add each of said first plurality of items to a subsumed update list comprises: program instructions to compare a first target node to a second target node, said first target node being of said first plurality of items, said second target node being of said second plurality of items, said second target node being for a tail of said subsumed update list; and program instructions, responsive to said first target node being a descendant of said second target node, to apply a subsume logic to said first plurality of items based on at least one subsume matrix; program instructions to apply said subsume logic to each of said first plurality of items at least based on the second plurality of items, wherein applying said subsume logic to each of said first plurality of items pre-processes said pending update list, thereby consolidating redundant updates and removing conflicting updates, and wherein program instructions to apply said subsume logic to each of said first plurality of items comprises: program instructions to receive three subsume matrices, each of said three subsume matrices being associated with at least one subsume rule; program instructions to determine a subsume rule of said at least one subsume rule to apply based, at least in part, on an operation type of an incoming item of the first plurality of items and an operation type of a previous item of said subsumed update list; and program instructions to execute each of said second plurality of items of said subsumed update list; wherein program instructions to execute each of said second plurality of items of said subsumed update list is performed in a single traversal of a hierarchically structured document.