Various techniques are provided for facilitating the management of hierarchical data within a relational database system. One such technique involves separating the storage structures used to store data that captures the information about the hierarchy (the “hierarchy structures”), from the storage structures used to store the content of the resources that belong to the hierarchy (the “content structures”). Techniques are also provided for allowing users to customize the metadata attributes associated with resources that belong to the information hierarchy. One technique involves registering XML schemas that specify the metadata attributes desired by a user. Another technique involves storing attributes that do not correspond to any declared field in a “catch-all” column within the resource table. Techniques are provided for determining how to store resources as they are added to the database. According to one technique, the database server searches the data of the resource to find content-type information. If content-type information is found, then the database server consults a content-type to content-structure mapping to determine where to store the content of the resource.