Stick with Relational Databases

Meta Group talk about the approaches that IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are making to store unstructured data. They also talk about content management vendors differing approaches. Their overall suggestion is that for the next two to three years the architecture and infrastructure is too immature for deployment. Also, that document management vendors will be increasingly commoditized by larger players.

""The war over database structure has been won by the relational database
vendors," says META Group analyst Doug Laney. "Therefore, unless users
have some exotic data types or accessibility needs, they should reject
the blandishments of object-oriented and pure-XML databases in favor of
extending their RDBMS management schemas to encompass these unstructured
data types.""

"Existing content management vendors must realize that the semistructured and unstructured repository market will be commoditized by the RDBMS due to existing presence and costs. Users will increasingly want to standardize on one of the large vendor solutions (IBM, Oracle,
Microsoft, or, to a lesser extent, Sybase), and the content management
vendors must begin supporting these databases as repositories for
content in addition to metadata...User organizations should recognize that enterprise-wide unified management of semistructured and unstructured data and information infrastructure/architecture will remain impractical for the next two to three years, but is moving increasingly in that direction."

http://www.metagroup.com/cgi-bin/inetcgi/search/displayArticle.jsp?oid=31477