5. The method of claim 2 , further comprising performing operations on the target data after retrieving the target data, wherein the operations on the target data are performed by the relational database system receiving a second Xpath expression and converting the second Xpath expression into a second SQL statement.
5. The method of claim 2 , further comprising performing operations on the target data after retrieving the target data, wherein the operations on the target data are performed by the relational database system receiving a second Xpath expression and converting the second Xpath expression into a second SQL statement. 6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the operations on the target data comprise at least one of updating, deleting, and inserting.