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Article
Publication date: 19 June 2009

Jing Lu and Bernhard Mitschang

Extensible Markup Language (XML)‐based data integration systems (DIS) aim to support global updates. Data consistency among data sources is not yet enforced at the integration…

503

Abstract

Purpose

Extensible Markup Language (XML)‐based data integration systems (DIS) aim to support global updates. Data consistency among data sources is not yet enforced at the integration level or enforced in an ad hoc manner which leads to redundant checking of consistency or unrepairable mistakes. This paper aims to provide XQuery trigger service to enforce data integrity and data consistency in the DIS at the integration level.

Design/methodology/approach

Data consistency is enforced among data sources through providing XQuery trigger service for the XML‐DIS. An XQuery trigger model is defined and shown how to use this model to define different integrity constraints and triggers at the integration level. The paper proposes the architecture of the XQuery trigger service and shows how to enforce data consistency in the DIS. Important components including event detection, condition evaluation and action firing are discussed. Necessary algorithms including how to produce ChangeRecord, how to find activated triggers, how to process LET and FOR clauses and how to create data objects from XML fragment are proposed. Trigger termination and failure handling are also discussed.

Findings

XQuery trigger can express miscellaneous data integrity constraints and triggers in the DIS and is highly abstract, refined and easy to understand. XQuery trigger service provides an easy‐to‐maintain method of the data consistency rules and a uniform, nonredundant and centralized enforcement of data consistency.

Originality/value

An XQuery trigger model with namespace annotations, which can define constraints and triggers among different data sources. An XQuery trigger service architecture for the XML‐DIS, which can enforce data consistency at the integration level. For DIS administrators, who want to enforce data consistency when permitting updates at the integration level.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 5 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 April 2008

Sherif Sakr

Estimating the sizes of query results and intermediate results is crucial to many aspects of query processing. All database systems rely on the use of cardinality estimates to…

1604

Abstract

Purpose

Estimating the sizes of query results and intermediate results is crucial to many aspects of query processing. All database systems rely on the use of cardinality estimates to choose the cheapest execution plan. In principle, the problem of cardinality estimation is more complicated in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) domain than the relational domain. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel framework for estimating the cardinality of XQuery expressions as well as their sub‐expressions. Additionally, this paper proposes a novel XQuery cardinality estimation benchmark. The main aim of this benchmark is to establish the basis of comparison between the different estimation approaches in the XQuery domain.

Design/methodology/approach

As a major innovation, the paper exploits the relational algebraic infrastructure to provide accurate estimation in the context of XML and XQuery domains. In the proposed framework, XQuery expressions are translated into an equivalent relational algebraic plans and then using a well defined set of inference rules and a set of special properties of the algebraic plan, this framework is able to provide high‐accurate estimation for XQuery expressions.

Findings

This paper is believed to be the first which provides a uniform framework to estimate the cardinality of more powerful XML querying capabilities using XQuery expressions as well as their sub‐expressions. It exploits the relational algebraic infrastructure to provide accurate estimation in the context of XML and XQuery domains. Moreover, the proposed framework can act as a meta‐model through its ability to incorporate different summarized XML structures and different histogram techniques which allows the model designers to achieve their targets by focusing their effort on designing or selecting the adequate techniques for them. In addition, this paper proposes benchmark for XQuery cardinality estimation systems. The proposed benchmark distinguishes itself from the other existing XML benchmarks in its focus on establishing the basis for comparing the different estimation approaches in the XML domain in terms of their accuracy of the estimations and their completeness in handling different XML querying features.

Research limitations/implications

The current status of this proposed XQuery cardinality estimations framework does not support the estimation of the queries over the order information of the source XML documents and does not support non‐numeric predicates.

Practical implications

The experiments of this XQuery cardinality estimation system demonstrate its effectiveness and show high‐accurate estimation results. Utilizing the cardinality estimation properties during the SQL translation of XQuery expression results in an average improvement of 20 percent on the performance of their execution times.

Originality/value

This paper presents a novel framework for estimating the cardinality of XQuery expressions as well as its sub‐expressions. A novel XQuery cardinality estimation benchmark is introduced to establish the basis of comparison between the different estimation approaches in the XQuery domain.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 4 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 April 2011

Turkka Näppilä, Katja Moilanen and Timo Niemi

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an expressive query language, called relational XML query language (RXQL), capable of dealing with heterogeneous Extensible Markup…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an expressive query language, called relational XML query language (RXQL), capable of dealing with heterogeneous Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents in data‐centric applications. In RXQL, data harmonization (i.e. the removal of heterogeneous factors from XML data) is integrated with typical data‐centric features (e.g. grouping, ordering, and aggregation).

Design/methodology/approach

RXQL is based on the XML relation representation, developed in the authors' previous work. This is a novel approach to unambiguously represent semistructured data relationally, which makes it possible in RXQL to manipulate XML data in a tuple‐oriented way, while XML data are typically manipulated in a path‐oriented way.

Findings

The user is able to describe the result of an RXQL query straightforwardly based on non‐XML syntax. The analysis of this description, through the mechanism developed in this paper, affords the automatic construction of the query result. This feature increases significantly the declarativeness of RXQL compared to the path‐oriented XML languages where the user needs to control the construction of the result extensively.

Practical implications

The authors' formal specification of the construction of the query result can be considered as an abstract implementation of RXQL.

Originality/value

RXQL is a declarative query language capable of integrating data harmonization seamlessly with other data‐centric features in the manipulation of heterogeneous XML data. So far, these kinds of XML query languages have been missing. Obviously, the expressive power of RXQL can be achieved by computationally complete XML languages, such as XQuery. However, these are not actual query languages, and the query formulation in them usually presupposes programming skills that are beyond the ordinary end‐user.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 7 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 May 2005

Eric Pardede, J. Wendy Rahayu and David Taniar

Despite the increasing demand for an effective XML document repository, many are still reluctant to store XML documents in their natural tree form. One main reason is the…

Abstract

Despite the increasing demand for an effective XML document repository, many are still reluctant to store XML documents in their natural tree form. One main reason is the inadequacy of XML query languages to update the tree‐form XML documents. Even though some of the languages have supported minimum update facilities, they do not concern on preserving the documents constraints. The results are updated documents with very low database integrity. In this paper, we propose a methodology to accommodate XML Update without violating the conceptual constraints of the documents. The method takes form as a set of functions that perform checking mechanisms before update operations. In this paper we discuss the conceptual constraints embedded in three different relationship structures: association, aggregation and inheritance relationship. We highlight four constraints related with association relationship (nuber of participants, referential integrity, cardinality, and adhesion), five constraints related with aggregation relationship (cardinality, adhesion, ordering, homogeneity and share‐ability) and two constraints related to inheritance relationship (disjoint and number of super‐class). In addition, a specific constraint, which is collection type of children, will also be discussed. The proposed method can be implemented in different ways, for example in this paper we use XQuery language. Since the XML update requires schema, in this paper we also propose the mapping of the these constraints in the conceptual level to the XML Schema. We use XML Schema for structure validation, even though the algorithm can be used by any schema languages.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 1 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 20 November 2009

398

Abstract

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 5 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Article
Publication date: 28 August 2009

Jun Wu and Shang‐Yi Huang

The purpose of this paper is to reduce the number of join operations for retrieving Extensible Markup Language (XML) data from a relational database.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reduce the number of join operations for retrieving Extensible Markup Language (XML) data from a relational database.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper proposes a new approach to eliminate the join operations for parent‐child traversing and/or sibling searching such that the performance of query processing could be improved. The rationale behind the design of the proposed approach is to distribute the structural information into relational databases.

Findings

The paper finds that the number of join operations which are needed for processing parent‐child traversal and sibling search can be bounded under the proposed approach. It also verifies the capability of the proposed approach by a series of experiments based on the XMark benchmark, for which it has encouraging results.

Research limitations/implications

Compared with previous approaches based on the structure encoding method, the proposed approach needs more space to store additional immediate predecessor's IDs. However, the approach has similar performance to others and it is much easier to implement.

Practical implications

The experimental results show that the performance of the proposed approach is less than 3 per cent of the well‐known MonetDB approach for processing benchmark queries. Moreover, its bulkloading time is much less than that for the MonetDB. There is no doubt that the approach is efficient for accessing XML data with acceptable overheads.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the implementations of XML database systems.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 5 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 June 2017

Keng Hoon Gan and Keat Keong Phang

When accessing structured contents in XML form, information requests are formulated in the form of special query languages such as NEXI, Xquery, etc. However, it is not easy for…

Abstract

Purpose

When accessing structured contents in XML form, information requests are formulated in the form of special query languages such as NEXI, Xquery, etc. However, it is not easy for end users to compose such information requests using these special queries because of their complexities. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to automate the construction of such queries from common query like keywords or form-based queries.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors address the problem of constructing queries for XML retrieval by proposing a semantic-syntax query model that can be used to construct different types of structured queries. First, a generic query structure known as semantic query structure is designed to store query contents given by user. Then, generation of a target language is carried out by mapping the contents in semantic query structure to query syntax templates stored in knowledge base.

Findings

Evaluations were carried out based on how well information needs are captured and transformed into a target query language. In summary, the proposed model is able to express information needs specified using query like NEXI. Xquery records a lower percentage because of its language complexity. The authors also achieve satisfactory query construction rate with an example-based method, i.e. 86 per cent (for NEXI IMDB topics) and 87 per cent (NEXI Wiki topics), respectively, compare to benchmark of 78 per cent by Sumita and Iida in language translation.

Originality/value

The proposed semantic-syntax query model allows flexibility of accommodating new query language by separating the semantic of query from its syntax.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 13 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 October 2011

Nitin Arora

The aim of this article is to describe the genesis and structural components for an open‐source MusicXML digital library platform.

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this article is to describe the genesis and structural components for an open‐source MusicXML digital library platform.

Design/methodology/approach

After briefly discussing music information retrieval within the context of emerging approaches to digital music notation formats, specifically MusicXML, the article discusses how the author's graduate school project evolved into a search and delivery platform for MusicXML files and their manifestations, with particular emphasis on the platform's underlying software structure. A discussion of the platform's end user interface and administrative scripts provides further explanation regarding how the system functions.

Findings

Although work remains to be done, digital libraries are poised to use MusicXML and its supporting software for the advancement of music‐related services offered to patrons.

Originality/value

The paper discusses a proof‐of‐concept, open‐source MusicXML digital library platform that may be of interest to librarians with and without musical and/or programming backgrounds.

Details

OCLC Systems & Services: International digital library perspectives, vol. 27 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1065-075X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 September 2019

Zouhaier Brahmia, Fabio Grandi and Rafik Bouaziz

Any XML schema definition can be organized according to one of the following design styles: “Russian Doll”, “Salami Slice”, “Venetian Blind” and “Garden of Eden” (with the…

Abstract

Purpose

Any XML schema definition can be organized according to one of the following design styles: “Russian Doll”, “Salami Slice”, “Venetian Blind” and “Garden of Eden” (with the additional “Bologna” style actually representing absence of style). Conversion from a design style to another can facilitate the reuse and exchange of schema specifications encoded using the XML schema language. Without any computer-aided engineering support, style conversions must be performed very carefully as they are difficult and error-prone operations. The purpose of this paper is to efficiently deal with such XML schema design style conversions.

Design/methodology/approach

A general approach, named StyleVolution, for automatic management of XML schema design style conversions, is proposed. StyleVolution is equipped with a suite of seven procedures: four for converting a valid XML schema from any other design style to the “Garden of Eden” style, which has been chosen as a normalized XML schema format, and three for converting from the “Garden of Eden” style to any of the other desired design styles.

Findings

Procedures, algorithms and methods for XML schema design style conversions are presented. The feasibility of the approach has been shown through the encoding (using the XQuery language) and the testing (with the Altova XMLSpy 2019 tool) of a suite of seven ready-to-use procedures. Moreover, four test procedures are provided for checking the conformance of a given input XML schema to a schema design style.

Originality/value

The proposed approach implements a new technique for efficiently managing XML schema design style conversions, which can be used to make any given XML schema file to conform to a desired design style.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 16 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 May 2006

Rajugan Rajagopalapillai, Elizabeth Chang, Tharam S. Dillon and Ling Feng

In data engineering, view formalisms are used to provide flexibility to users and user applications by allowing them to extract and elaborate data from the stored data sources…

Abstract

In data engineering, view formalisms are used to provide flexibility to users and user applications by allowing them to extract and elaborate data from the stored data sources. Conversely, since the introduction of EXtensible Markup Language (XML), it is fast emerging as the dominant standard for storing, describing, and interchanging data among various web and heterogeneous data sources. In combination with XML Schema, XML provides rich facilities for defining and constraining user‐defined data semantics and properties, a feature that is unique to XML. In this context, it is interesting to investigate traditional database features, such as view models and view design techniques for XML. However, traditional view formalisms are strongly coupled to the data language and its syntax, thus it proves to be a difficult task to support views in the case of semi‐structured data models. Therefore, in this paper we propose a Layered View Model (LVM) for XML with conceptual and schemata extensions. Here our work is three‐fold; first we propose an approach to separate the implementation and conceptual aspects of the views that provides a clear separation of concerns, thus, allowing analysis and design of views to be separated from their implementation. Secondly, we define representations to express and construct these views at the conceptual level. Thirdly, we define a view transformation methodology for XML views in the LVM, which carries out automated transformation to a view schema and a view query expression in an appropriate query language. Also, to validate and apply the LVM concepts, methods and transformations developed, we propose a viewdriven application development framework with the flexibility to develop web and database applications for XML, at varying levels of abstraction.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 2 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

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