A method and system that allows efficient shredding of large instances of
hierarchical data structures into relational data structures. Large
instances of hierarchical data structures, which are able to be larger
than the random access storage of a computer used to shred them into
relational data structures, are incrementally shredded into a temporary
storage. When the amount of data shredded into the temporary storage
reaches or exceeds a predetermined commit count, the data in the
temporary storage is transferred to a relational data structure
maintained by a relational database manager. A Document Type Description
annotation is provided to allow the end user to specify execution order
for SQL commands and to specify commit count values.