A method, an apparatus and a computer program product for converting an XML encoded document into an equivalent SQL table are provided. An arbitrary XML DTD may be converted into an equivalent form by means of which individual node documents stored in the SQL table may be directly accessed. The SQL table is able to be converted back into an XML document of similar structure to the original document from which the table was derived. A set of operations which can be performed on the SQL table is also disclosed. An arbitrarily complex XML document may be broken into suitably sized portions, each of which can be managed independently as a standalone XML document without compromising the validity of the document as a whole. The management of these portions takes advantage of the speed, robustness and maturity of RDBMS systems, while maintaining the hierarchical structure inherent in all XML documents.