A technique is provided for generating one or more XML documents from a relational database using the XPath data model. Data stored on a data storage device that is connected to a computer is transformed. Initially, a document object model tee is generated using a document access definition, which defines the mapping between an XML tree structure and relational tables. The document object model tree is traversed to obtain information to retrieve relational data. The relational data is mapped to one or more XML documents.