Techniques are provided for searching within a collection of XML documents. A relational table in an XML index stores an entry for each node of a set of nodes in the collection. Each entry of the relational table stores an order key and a path identifier along with the atomized value of the node. An index on the atomized value provides a mechanism to perform a node-aware full-text search. Instead of storing the atomized value in the table, a virtual column may be created to represent, for each node, the atomized value of the node. Alternately, each entry of the relational table stores an order key and a path identifier along with, for simple nodes, the atomized value, and for complex nodes, a null value. For a complex node with a descendant text node, a separate entry is stored for the descendant text node in the relational table.