1. A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer usable program code programmed for skipping XML index scans with common ancestors of a previously failed predicate, the operations of the computer program product comprising: receiving an XML query comprising search predicates for locating information in an XML document; selecting entries from an XML document index such that the selected entries satisfy at least one predicate of the XML query, the XML document index generated from the XML document using an XML query expression, the XML document index comprising one or more entries, each entry comprising an XML document path, a document identifier, a node identifier, and a value, wherein the XML document path describes paths to values of the XML document and the node identifier comprises one or more fields corresponding to one or more branches in an XML tree, wherein a single field corresponds to a single branch; evaluating each of the selected entries to determine whether an XML document path in the selected entry satisfies the remaining predicates of the XML query, the remaining predicates being different from the at least one predicate of the XML query; determining an XML document path in the selected entry that fails one of the remaining predicates; and skipping entries from the set of selected entries, each skipped entry identified by a node identifier for the entry wherein the node identifier comprises a field corresponding to the failed XML document path, the skipped entries having an ancestor XML node at a hierarchical level and position that matches an ancestor XML node at the hierarchical level and position of the associated selected entry that fails one of the remaining predicates.