To read this content please select one of the options below:

XA2C: a framework for manipulating XML data

Gilbert Tekli (Telecom St Etienne, University Jean Monnet, St Etienne, France)
Richard Chbeir (Laboratoire LE2I (UMR – CNRS), Bourgogne University, Dijon, France)
Jacques Fayolle (Telecom St Etienne, University Jean Monnet, St Etienne, France)

International Journal of Web Information Systems

ISSN: 1744-0084

Article publication date: 30 August 2011

178

Abstract

Purpose

XML has spread beyond the computer science fields and reached other areas such as, e‐commerce, identification, information storage, instant messaging and others. Data communicated over these domains are now mainly based on XML. Thus, allowing non‐expert programmers to manipulate and control their XML data is essential. The purpose of this paper is to present an XA2C framework intended for both non‐expert and expert programmers and provide them with means to write/draw their XML data manipulation operations.

Design/methodology/approach

In the literature, this issue has been dealt with from two perspectives: first, XML alteration/adaptation techniques requiring a certain level of expertise to be implemented and are not unified yet; and second, Mashups, which are not formally defined yet and are not specific to XML data, and XML‐oriented visual languages are based on structural transformations and data extraction mainly and do not allow XML textual data manipulations. The paper discusses existing approaches and the XA2C framework is presented.

Findings

The framework is defined based on the dataflow paradigm (visual diagram compositions) while taking advantage of both Mashups and XML‐oriented visual languages by defining a well‐founded modular architecture and an XML‐oriented visual functional composition language based on colored petri nets allowing functional compositions. The framework takes advantage of existing XML alteration/adaptation techniques by defining them as XML‐oriented manipulation functions. A prototype called XA2C is developed and presented here for testing and validating the authors' approach.

Originality/value

This paper presents a detailed description of an XML‐oriented manipulation framework implementing the XML‐oriented composition definition language.

Keywords

Citation

Tekli, G., Chbeir, R. and Fayolle, J. (2011), "XA2C: a framework for manipulating XML data", International Journal of Web Information Systems, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 240-269. https://doi.org/10.1108/17440081111165884

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Related articles