Which is best/efficient for maintaining in-app documentation in a web app: xml, INI, DB, other?

Background: I'm building a small application at the moment, but I'm at a point where I'm slowly adding documentation into the interface, e.g. instructions, how-to's etc.

I'm wondering if there's an effective approach to centralizing the documentation so that dealing with issues like:

1. localization
2. Editing/maintenance
3. Reference/cross-referencing, etc

is a little easier.

I've considered throwing it all into 开发者_如何学运维a dedicated table in my DB, but I would really prefer to minimize DB queries to only the essential/non-trivial data. I've considered INI files, but I'm concerned about long-term maintenance; likewise with XML.

Out of all of the options I'd likely choose XML for both portability and cross-referencing. If anyone has had similar experiences with this issue, I would really love to know what approach you took.

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I would really prefer to minimize DB queries to only the essential/non-trivial data.

What for?
There is not a single reason to do that.

but I'm concerned about long-term maintenance; likewise with XML.

Exactly you are.

Database is the only way to go. XML is a data-interchange format and ini files used to store settings, not data