Methods and apparatus are provided for incremental update of an XML tree defined from a recursive XML view of a relational database. A method comprises the steps of detecting at least one change to the relational database; providing one or more queries to the relational database to map the change to the relational database into changes to the XML tree, wherein at least one component of a definition of the one or more queries is executed a plurality of times in traversing a path through the XML tree; and applying the mapped change to the XML tree. A bud-cut method and a reduction approach are presented.