Accomplishing Deterministic XML Query Optimization

As the popularity of XML (extensible Markup Language) keeps growing rapidly, the management of XML compliant structured-document databases has become a very interesting and compelling research area. Query optimization for XML structured-documents stands out as one of the most challenging research issues in this area because of the much enlarged optimization (search) space, which is a consequence of the intrinsic complexity of the underlying data model of XML data. We therefore propose to apply deterministic transformations on query expressions to most aggressively prune the search space and fast achieve a sufficiently improved alternative (if not the optimal) for each incoming query expression. This idea is not just exciting but practically attainable. This paper first provides an overview of our optimization strategy, and then focuses on the key implementation issues of our rule-based transformation system for XML query optimization in a database environment. The performance results we obtained from experimentation show that our approach is a valid and effective one.     

Algebraic XML Construction and its Optimization in Natix

While using an algebra that acts on sets of variable bindings for evaluating XML queries, the problem of constructing XML from these bindings arises. One approach is to define a powerful operator that is able to perform a complex construction of a representation of the XML result document. The drawback is that such an operator in its generality is hard to implement and disables algebraic optimization since it has to be executed last in the plan. Therefore we suggest to construct XML documents by special query execution plans called construction plans built from simple, easy to implement and efficient operators. The paper proposes four simple algebraic operators needed for XML document construction. Further, we introduce an optimizing translation algorithm of construction clauses into algebraic expressions and briefly point out algebraic optimizations enabled by our approach.     

Efficiently supporting order in XML query processing

XML is an ordered data model and XQuery expressions return results that have a well-defined order. However, little work on how order is supported in XML query processing has been done to date. In this paper we study the issues related to handling order in the XML context, namely challenges imposed by the XML data model, the variety of order requirements of the XQuery language, and the need to maintain order in the presence of updates to the XML data. We propose an efficient solution that addresses all these issues. Our solution is based on a key encoding for XML nodes that serves as node identity and at the same time encodes order. We design rules for encoding order of processed XML nodes based on the XML algebraic query execution model and the node key encoding. These rules do not require any actual sorting for intermediate results during execution. Our approach enables efficient order-sensitive incremental view maintenance as it makes most XML algebra operators distributive with respect to bag union. We prove the correctness of our order encoding approach. Our approach is implemented and integrated with Rainbow, an XML data management system developed at WPI. We have tested the efficiency of our approach using queries that have different order requirements. We have also measured the relative cost of different components related to our order solution in different types of queries. In general the overhead of maintaining order in our approach is very small relative to the query processing time.     

基于关系代数的XML数据查询

XML渐已成为Web上数据表示和交换的通用语言。为了有效地利用大量的XML文档，需要研究XML数据查询技术。提出了基于关系代数的XML数据查询方法。XML子句可以用关系代数表达式表示，并通过关系代数操作得到查询结果。该方法为查询XML数据提供了一种简洁和有效的手段。     

Foundations for object-oriented query processing

A minimal framework for an object-oriented query language standard should (1) include a formal definition of a high-level data model and the syntax and semantics of associated query languages, (2) provide the functionality of relational query languages, and (3) support proofs of correctness of transformations for logical query optimization. In this paper, a high-level conceptual model for object-oriented query processing is discussed; the model includes widely-used structural abstractions such as the isa relationship, associations (properties) between complex objects and complex objects/values, and inheritance of properties. A formal, algebraic query language for the model, inspired by relational algebra, is presented. Operators of the algebra allow queries based on values, queries that manipulate entire objects, and queries that construct new objects from existing objects/values. All queries retain connections to existing database objects, providing logical access paths to data. Each query result is a class, so the algebra has the closure property. The intensional and extensional results of query operators are summarized. Two forms of logical query optimization supported by the query algebra are outlined: algebraic transformations and classifier-based optimizations (optimizations which employ inclusion and exclusion dependencies between classes).     

Adaptive relaxation for querying heterogeneous XML data sources

Searching XML data with a structured XML query can improve the precision of results compared with a keyword search. However, the structural heterogeneity of the large number of XML data sources makes it difficult to answer the structured query exactly. As such, query relaxation is necessary. Previous work on XML query relaxation poses the problem of unnecessary computation of a big number of unqualified relaxed queries. To address this issue, we propose an adaptive relaxation approach which relaxes a query against different data sources differently based on their conformed schemas. In this paper, we present a set of techniques that supports this approach, which includes schema-aware relaxation rules for relaxing a query adaptively, a weighted model for ranking relaxed queries, and algorithms for adaptive relaxation of a query and top-k query processing. We discuss results from a comprehensive set of experiments that show the effectiveness and the efficiency of our approach.     

模糊XML关键字近似查询方法研究

在精确XML文档上的关键字查询方法的研究大多是基于LCA语义或者其变种语义(SLCA,ELCA等)开展的,将包含所有关键字的最紧致XML子树片段作为查询结果返回。但是这些基于LCA语义产生的查询结果中通常包含了大量的冗余信息,现实世界中存在着大量的不确定和模糊信息,因而如何从模糊XML文档中搜索到高质量的关键字查询结果是一个需要研究的问题。针对模糊XML文档上的关键字近似查询方法进行研究,通过引入最小连接树(MCT)的概念,提出在模糊XML文档上关键字查询的所有GDMCTs问题,并给出解决这一问题的基于栈的算法All fuzzy GDMCTs,该算法可以得到满足用户指定的子树大小阈值和可能性阈值条件的所有GDMCTs结果。实验表明,该算法在模糊XML文档上能够得到较高质量的关键字查询结果。     

Query Processing and Optimization Techniques over Streamed Fragmented XML

With the extensive use of XML in applications over the Web, efficient query processing over streaming XML has become a core challenge due to one-pass processing and limited resources. Taking advantage of Hole-Filler model for XML fragments, this paper proposes a hybrid structure (FQ-Index) for both the queries and fragments, and proposes an XML fragment processing algorithm to evaluate forward XPath queries over streamed XML fragments. Two optimization rules, dependence pruning and prefix pruning are also developed. Dependence pruning scheme prunes off the dependent operations caused by fragmentation and transforms the queries for XML tag into queries for XML fragments, while prefix pruning scheme prunes off the “redundant” prefix along the path according to the tag structure. The effectiveness of the techniques developed is illustrated with a detailed set of experiments.     

RRSi: indexing XML data for proximity twig queries

Twig query pattern matching is a core operation in XML query processing. Indexing XML documents for twig query processing is of fundamental importance to supporting effective information retrieval. In practice, many XML documents on the web are heterogeneous and have their own formats; documents describing relevant information can possess different structures. Therefore some “user-interesting” documents having similar but non-exact structures against a user query are often missed out. In this paper, we propose the RRSi, a novel structural index designed for structure-based query lookup on heterogeneous sources of XML documents supporting proximate query answers. The index avoids the unnecessary processing of structurally irrelevant candidates that might show good content relevance. An optimized version of the index, oRRSi, is also developed to further reduce both space requirements and computational complexity. To our knowledge, these structural indexes are the first to support proximity twig queries on XML documents. The results of our preliminary experiments show that RRSi and oRRSi based query processing significantly outperform previously proposed techniques in XML repositories with structural heterogeneity.

一种支持高效XML 路径查询的自适应结构索引

提出了一种新的自适应结构索引:AS-Index(adaptive structural index),能够克服现有静态索引和自适应索引的缺陷,具备高效的查询和调整性能.AS-Index 建立在F&B-Index 的基础之上,其索引结构包括F&B-Index,Query-Table 和Part-Table.Query-Table 能够记录频繁查询,避免了查询过程中的冗余操作.并且,在Query-Table 的基础上提出了自底向上的查询处理过程,能够充分利用现有的频繁查询高效地回答非频繁查询.Part-Table 用于优化包含祖先后裔边的查询,进一步提高了查询性能.现有的自适应结构索引的调整粒度是XML 元素节点,调整过程往往需要遍历整个文档.而AS-Index 是基于F&B-Index 节点的增量调整,其过程是局部的,高效的,并且能够支持复杂分支查询的调整.实验结果表明,AS-Index 在查询和调整性能上优于现有的XML 结构索引.同时,相比于现有的自适应结构索引,AS-Index 针对大规模文档具有更加优良的可扩展性.     

Transformation of structure-shy programs with application to XPath queries and strategic functions

Various programming languages allow the construction of structure-shy programs. Such programs are defined generically for many different datatypes and only specify specific behavior for a few relevant subtypes. Typical examples are XML query languages that allow selection of subdocuments without exhaustively specifying intermediate element tags. Other examples are languages and libraries for polytypic or strategic functional programming and for adaptive object-oriented programming.In this paper, we present an algebraic approach to transformation of declarative structure-shy programs, in particular for strategic functions and XML queries. We formulate a rich set of algebraic laws, not just for transformation of structure-shy programs, but also for their conversion into structure-sensitive programs and vice versa. We show how subsets of these laws can be used to construct effective rewrite systems for specialization, generalization, and optimization of structure-shy programs. We present a type-safe encoding of these rewrite systems in Haskell which itself uses strategic functional programming techniques. We discuss the application of these rewrite systems for XPath query optimization and for query migration in the context of schema evolution.     

XML数据的路径表达式查询优化技术

路径表达式作为XML数据查询语言的核心部分,关于它的计算方法的研究成果已有很多,然而针对路径表达式本身进行优化的研究却相对较少.提出了两种针对路径表达式的优化策略:路径缩短策略和补路径策略,从而提高了XML路径查询效率.路径缩短策略根据XML文档模式信息,将路径表达式查询长度缩短,从而简化查询本身以降低需要的查询代价;而补路径策略则试图使用代价更小的等价路径表达式来替换原始查询.经过对实验数据的分析,这两种优化策略对于绝大多数路径表达式查询可以应用,并可大幅度地改进路径表达式的查询性能.     

路径分区编码优化小枝查询

有效地存储查询XML文档已经成为当今数据库领域的研究热点。从XML文档的路径统计出发,提出了路径分区存储编码方案,并依此消除了小枝查询的后裔边和通配符。针对这类不含//和*的小枝查询,利用路径分区编码的特性,给出了基于结构约束节点的Twig查询算法,极大地减少了结构连接次数。实验表明,该算法能有效滤除无关元素,提高小枝查询效率。     

基于代数的Transform查询优化策略

XQuery/Update中定义了一种特殊的查询--Transform查询.Transform查询类似于关系数据库中的假设查询,可以表示成假设查询的一般形式:"Q when{U}",即查询Q的查询结果是假设数据库执行了更新操作{U}以后的结果,而更新操作U实际不修改数据库的状态.Transform查询需要拷贝XML数据库中的结点,并对拷贝的结点执行更新操作,所以不影响数据库的状态.但该操作通常拷贝和更新了大量与查询结果无关的结点,因此如何减少拷贝与更新操作的代价是Transform查询处理优化的关键.提出了基于OrientXA的Transform查询优化方法,并在NativeXML数据库系统OrientX 3.0里实现和验证了该方法.     

一种基于关键字的XML文档查询算法

对XML文档查询的常用方法有两种：一种是使用查询语言;另一种是使用关键字,而使用关键字查询XML文档比使用查询语言更为简单方便。给出了一种使用关键字查询XML文档的索引查找算法。该算法只需要扫描一次关键字对应的编码列,就可以找到需要的编码,提高了查询效率。实验表明该算法是可行的和有效的。     

Coding-based Join Algorithms for Structural Queries on Graph-Structured XML Document

In many applications, XML documents need to be modelled as graphs. The query processing of graph-structured XML documents brings new challenges. In this paper, we design a method based on labelling scheme for structural queries processing on graph-structured XML documents. We give each node some labels, the reachability labelling scheme. By extending an interval-based reachability labelling scheme for DAG by Rakesh et al., we design labelling schemes to support the judgements of reachability relationships for general graphs. Based on the labelling schemes, we design graph structural join algorithms to answer the structural queries with only ancestor-descendant relationship efficiently. For the processing of subgraph query, we design a subgraph join algorithm. With efficient data structure, the subgraph join algorithm can process subgraph queries with various structures efficiently. Experimental results show that our algorithms have good performance and scalability. Support by the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.60533110; the National Grand Fundamental Research 973 Program of China under Grant No. 2006CB303000; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 60773068 and No. 60773063.     

XML 关键词检索的查询理解

与纯文本文档集相比,使用语义标签标注的半结构化的XML文档集,有助于信息检索系统更好地理解待检索文档.同样,结构化查询,比如SQL,XQuery和Xpath,相对于纯关键词查询更加清晰地表达了用户的查询意图.这二者都能够帮助信息检索系统获得更好的检索精度.但关键词查询因其简单和易用性,仍被广泛使用.提出了XNodeRelation算法,以自动推断关键词查询的结构化信息(条件/目标节点类型).与已有的推断算法相比,综合了XML文档集的模式和统计信息以及查询关键词出现的上下文及其关联关系等推断用户的查询意图.大量的实验验证了该算法的有效性.     

一种高效的XML路径查询索引

XML文档的查询索引是当前研究的热点。提出一种高效的XML路径查询索引KDXI,首先对XML文档进行编码,然后建立结构索引并对结构索引进行编码。研究了基于KDXI索引结构的半结构连接算法和路径查询处理过程。通过KDXI索引机制,可以有效执行一般的路径查询语句,并避免冗余的结构连接操作。实验证明了KDXI索引机制的优越性。     

ArchIS: an XML-based approach to transaction-time temporal database systems

Effective support for temporal applications by database systems represents an important technical objective that is difficult to achieve since it requires an integrated solution for several problems, including (i) expressive temporal representations and data models, (ii) powerful languages for temporal queries and snapshot queries, (iii) indexing, clustering and query optimization techniques for managing temporal information efficiently, and (iv) architectures that bring together the different pieces of enabling technology into a robust system. In this paper, we present the ArchIS system that achieves these objectives by supporting a temporally grouped data model on top of RDBMS. ArchIS’ architecture uses (a) XML to support temporally grouped (virtual) representations of the database history, (b) XQuery to express powerful temporal queries on such views, (c) temporal clustering and indexing techniques for managing the actual historical data in a relational database, and (d) SQL/XML for executing the queries on the XML views as equivalent queries on the relational database. The performance studies presented in the paper show that ArchIS is quite effective at storing and retrieving under complex query conditions the transaction-time history of relational databases, and can also assure excellent storage efficiency by providing compression as an option. This approach achieves full-functionality transaction-time databases without requiring temporal extensions in XML or database standards, and provides critical support to emerging application areas such as RFID.     

A syntactic approach to twig-query matching on XML streams

Query matching on XML streams is challenging work for querying efficiency when the amount of queried stream data is huge and the data can be streamed in continuously. In this paper, the method Syntactic Twig-Query Matching (STQM) is proposed to process queries on an XML stream and return the query results continuously and immediately. STQM matches twig queries on the XML stream in a syntactic manner by using a lexical analyzer and a parser, both of which are built from our lexical-rules and grammar-rules generators according to the user's queries and document schema, respectively. For query matching, the lexical analyzer scans the incoming XML stream and the parser recognizes XML structures for retrieving every twig-query result from the XML stream. Moreover, STQM obtains query results without a post-phase for excluding false positives, which are common in many streaming query methods. Through the experimental results, we found that STQM matches the twig query efficiently and also has good scalability both in the queried data size and the branch degree of the twig query. The proposed method takes less execution time than that of a sequence-based approach, which is widely accepted as a proper solution to the XML stream query.