This paper presents a design of a metadata
engine that supports storage and retrieval of XML-based
metadata in PVR environment. As the XML-based metadata
possibly consist of various parts and are described in a large
hierarchical XML document, a series of preprocessing steps
such as fragmentation, binary encoding, encapsulation, and
indexing is performed before they are to be transferred from
the sender to the receiver via broadcast networks. The
proposed metadata engine is designed so that the cost of
accessing the XML-based metadata can be minimized and, at
the same time, dynamic updating and versioning for the
metadada can be accomplished with moderate cost.