Designing XML documents from conceptual schemas and workload information

Due to the increase of XML-based applications, XML schema design has become an important task. One approach is to consider conceptual schemas as a basis for generating XML documents compliant to consensual information of specific domains. However, the conversion of conceptual schemas to XML schemas is not a straightforward process and inconvenient design decisions can lead to a poor query processing on XML documents generated. This paper presents a conversion approach which considers data and query workload estimated for XML applications, in order to generate an XML schema from a conceptual schema. Load information is used to produce XML schemas which can respond well to the main queries of an XML application. We evaluate our approach through a case study carried out on a native XML database. The experimental results demonstrate that the XML schemas generated by our methodology contribute to a better query performance than related approaches.

XML Schema与DTD的比较及应用

XML是目前广泛应用的数据交换标准，而模式是应用XML进行数据交换的正确性的保证机制之一。模式详细描述了文档的结构，确保文档的元素和属性等的正确性。XML Schema和DTD是其中应用最广泛的模式。文中详细比较了两者的异同，并指出了各自的局限及最佳的应用，DTD非常适合于文本密集型XML文档，而XML Schema更适合于数据密集型XML文档。     

SPEX: Streamed and Progressive Evaluation of XPath

Streams are preferable over data stored in memory in contexts where data is too large or volatile, or a standard approach to data processing based on storing is too time or space consuming. Emerging applications such as publish-subscribe systems, data monitoring in sensor networks, financial and traffic monitoring, and routing of MPEG-7 call for querying streams. In many such applications, XML streams are arguably more appropriate than flat streams, for they convey (possibly unbounded) unranked ordered trees with labeled nodes. However, the flexibility enabled by XML streams in data modeling makes query evaluation different from traditional settings and challenging. This paper describes SPEX, a streamed and progressive evaluation of XML Path Language (XPath). SPEX compiles queries into networks of simple and independent transducers and processes XML streams with polynomial combined complexity. This makes SPEX especially suitable for implementation on devices with low memory and simple logic as used, for example, in mobile computing.     

一种基于Ontology的XML Schema复用方法

随着企业的发展,企业往往面临成百上千的XML Schema文档。XML Schema中存在的冗余和重复的问题已经不容忽视。本文首先讨论了利用本体来描述XML Schema语义的可能性,随后给出了一种基于本体的XML Schema复用方法,最后用一个具体的例子说明该方法的过程。     

Mapping DTDs to relational schemas with semantic constraints

XML is becoming a prevalent format and standard for data exchange in many applications. With the increase of XML data, there is an urgent need to research some efficient methods to store and manage XML data. As relational databases are the primary choices for this purpose considering their data management power, it is necessary to research the problem of mapping XML schemas to relational schemas. The semantics of XML schemas are crucial to design, query, and store XML documents and functional dependencies are very important representations of semantic information of XML schemas. As DTDs are one of the most frequently used schemas for XML documents in these days, we will use DTDs as schemas of XML documents here. This paper proposes the concept and the formal definition of XML functional dependencies over DTDs. A method to map XML DTDs to relational schemas with constraints such as functional dependencies, domain constraints, choice constraints, reference constraints, and cardinality constraints over DTDs is given, which can preserve the structures of DTDs as well as the semantics implied by the above constraints over DTDs. The concepts and method of mapping DTDs to relational schemas presented in the paper can be extended to the field of XML Schema just with some modifications in related formal definitions.     

XML DTD与XML Schema的对比

XML近来已成为Internet领域数据交换、数据表示的标准.而模式是应用XML进行数据交换的正确性的保证机制之一.本文介绍了XML的模式DTD和Schema,对XML DTD的局限性和XML Schema的优势进行了比较细致的分析.     

基于语义约束的数据转换模式研究

XML是因特网中不同企业之间进行信息交流的一种标准的数据转换模式,为了加速数据之间的转换,企业组织通过定义公共数据文档接口来实现基于XML的应用。本文提出了一种新的将关系数据模式转换为XML模式的方法。在转换的过程中,不仅考虑关系模式的结构,而且考虑语义约束,比如内部函数依赖。该方法的输入模式是具有多值函数依赖的关系模式,输出模式是X-Schema。最后,通过实验对该转换方法进行了验证。     

基于模式的XML文档相似度算法

提出一种基于XML模式的文档相似度算法,其中,XML模式间的相似度是XML文档聚类的重要依据,元素是XML模式的主体,模式的相似度由元素相似度组成,该算法综合考虑XML模式中元素的结构和语义信息,进一步提高计算相似度的精度。另外,该算法通过计算XML模式间的相似度,可以降低算法的复杂度,提高聚类的准确性,易于提取聚簇的通用XML模式。     

XML schema mappings for heterogeneous database access

The unprecedented increase in the availability of information, due to the success of the World Wide Web, has generated an urgent need for new and robust methods that simplify the querying and integration of data. In this research, we investigate a practical framework for data access to heterogeneous data sources. The framework utilizes the extensible markup language (XML) Schema as the canonical data model for the querying and integration of data from heterogeneous data sources. We present algorithms for mapping relational and network schemas into XML schemas using the relational mapping algorithm. We also present library system of databases (libSyD), a prototype of a system for heterogeneous database access.     

一种基于内容模型图的XML Schema Definition的提取方法

使用XML Schema能够对XML文档进行有效性验证以及对查询、转换等操作进行优化,但是实际应用中大量XML文档缺失关联的Schema.提出了一种根据XML文档自动提取对应的XML Schema Definition(XSD)的方法XSDInfer,先根据合并规则将XML解析过程中分析得到的模式信息记录在内容模型图中,再根据生成规则将其转化为内容模型表达式,进而得到XSD.XSDInfer能够在内存消耗比较少的情况下快速地处理超大规模、深度嵌套的XML文档,同时支持XSD的上下文相关的内容模型,提取出的XSD也具有更好的可读性.实验表明,与同类方法相比,XSDInfer具有更好的可扩展性和表达能力.     

基于模式的XML文档在关系数据库中存储的设计

随着XML逐渐成为因特网上数据表示和数据交换的新标准,基于XML的数据交换数量呈现出指数增长的趋势。为了解决XML数据的存储问题,详细分析了XML模式,提出一个中间文法XSchema,建立中间数据模型XSModel来实现XML模式到关系模式的映射,并把这个映射从XML DTD推广到XML Schema。     

Efficient management of uncertainty in XML schema matching

Despite advances in machine learning technologies a schema matching result between two database schemas (e.g., those derived from COMA++) is likely to be imprecise. In particular, numerous instances of ??possible mappings?? between the schemas may be derived from the matching result. In this paper, we study problems related to managing possible mappings between two heterogeneous XML schemas. First, we study how to efficiently generate possible mappings for a given schema matching task. While this problem can be solved by existing algorithms, we show how to improve the performance of the solution by using a divide-and-conquer approach. Second, storing and querying a large set of possible mappings can incur large storage and evaluation overhead. For XML schemas, we observe that their possible mappings often exhibit a high degree of overlap. We hence propose a novel data structure, called the block tree, to capture the commonalities among possible mappings. The block tree is useful for representing the possible mappings in a compact manner and can be efficiently generated. Moreover, it facilitates the evaluation of a probabilistic twig query (PTQ), which returns the non-zero probability that a fragment of an XML document matches a given query. For users who are interested only in answers with k-highest probabilities, we also propose the top-k PTQ and present an efficient solution for it. An extensive evaluation on real-world data sets shows that our approaches significantly improve the efficiency of generating, storing, and querying possible mappings.     

基于模式图的规范化XML模式设计

在给定关系模式的属性集及其函数依赖最小覆盖集的基础上,提出一种基于模式图的规范化XML模式设计方法。定义了模式图,在模式图中增加了Keys的描述信息,给出由函数依赖集构造模式图的算法。该模式图独立于具体的XML模式语言,经分析证明,所设计的模式满足XNF。     

XBridge-Mobile: efficient XML keyword search on mobile web data

Mobile computing over intelligent mobile is affecting human’s habits of obtaining information over Internet, especially keyword search. Most of previous keyword search works are mainly focused on traditional web data sources, in which the performance can be improved by adding more computing power and/or building more offline-computed index. However, it is very challenging to apply the traditional keyword search methods to mobile web-based keyword search because mobile computing has many different features, e.g., frequent disconnections, variety of bandwidths, limited power of mobile devices, limited data size to be downloaded, etc.. To address this challenge, in this paper we design an adaptive mobile-based XML keyword search approach, called XBridge-Mobile, that can derive the semantics of a keyword query and generate a set of effective structured patterns by analyzing the given keyword query and the schemas of XML data sources. Each structured pattern represents one of user’s possible search intentions. The patterns will be firstly sent to the mobile client from web server. And then, the mobile client can select some interested patterns to load the results. By doing this, we can reduce the communication cost a lot between web server and mobile client because only the derived patterns and a few results need to be transferred, not all the keyword search results, by which we can save lots of expenses when the downloaded data is priced. In addition, we can economically maintain the frequent structured pattern queries in the mobile device, which can further reduce the expense of downloading data. At last, we analyze and propose a ranking function to measure the quality of keyword search results, design a set of algorithms to optimize mobile keyword search based on the maintained structured patterns, and present the experimental study of XBridge-Mobile with real XML datasets.     

A framework for XML schema naming and design rules development tools

Many organizations are facing enormous challenges today in trying to integrate a wide range of software systems. These systems span the functional areas within an organization, as well as, the multitude of organizations and countries involved in a business process. To address the needs of information integration a number of organizations are developing standards to define the information units that will be shared. Many of these standards are an application of the XML family of software standards, hence the proliferation of content standards or xML standards. To ensure quality in the emerging content standards, the organizations producing them also define guidelines for how the XML standards, especially XML Schema, will be used in a given context. These guidelines are published as sets of Naming and Design Rules (NDR). Unfortunately, a single set of these rules do not meet the needs of the wide range of standards being developed. Moreover, the guidelines are being published as prose (e.g., English text) rather than in a computational form.To address these shortcomings and allow for the more rapid creation of high quality NDR, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing a set of tools to facilitate NDR development. The tools support the development of executable tests to support NDR, collaboration on the use of those tests, the grouping of tests into testing profiles, as well as, the association of NDR documentation with executable tests. The grouping mechanism allows rules to be selected from a larger set for use in a particular context. By also providing for the association of guidelines with executable tests, a testing suite can be quickly assembled. Furthermore, the pool of guidelines and their tests can be collaboratively developed, thereby leveraging resources and creating higher quality test sets in the end.The report describes a framework for tools to support the development of NDR for XML Schema. The tools aid in producing high quality XML schemas using a standards-based approach to information integration. The tools are based on open standards, making them highly configurable and reusable. The three primary functional areas of the tools described are authoring, testing, and sharing.     

Output schemas of XSLT stylesheets and their applications

The capabilities of XSLT processing are widely used to transform XML documents into target XML documents. These target XML documents conform to output schemas of the used XSLT stylesheet. Output schemas of XSLT stylesheets can be used for a static analysis of the used XSLT stylesheet, to automatically detect the XSLT stylesheet of target XML documents or to reason on the output schema without access to the target XML documents. In this paper, we develop an approach to automatically determining the output schema of an XSLT stylesheet. We also describe several application scenarios of output schemas. The experimental evaluation shows that our prototype can determine the output schemas of nearly all typical XSLT stylesheets and the improvements in preciseness in several application scenarios when using output schemas in comparison to when not using output schemas.     

Query processing optimization in broadcasting XML data in mobile communications

Todays, XML as a de facto standard is used to broadcast data over mobile wireless networks. In these networks, mobile clients send their XML queries over a wireless broadcast channel and recieve their desired XML data from the channel. However, downloading the whole XML data by a mobile device is a challenge since the mobile devices used by clients are small battery powered devices with limited resources. To meet this challenge, the XML data should be indexed in such a way that the desired XML data can be found easily and only such data can be downloaded instead of the whole XML data by the mobile clients. Several indexing methods are proposed to selectively access the XML data over an XML stream. However, the existing indexing methods cause an increase in the size of XML stream by including some extra information over the XML stream. In this paper, a new XML stream structure is proposed to disseminate the XML data over a broadcast channel by grouping and summarizing the structural information of XML nodes. By summarizing such information, the size of XML stream can be reduced and therefore, the latency of retrieving the desired XML data over a wirless broadcast channel can be reduced. The proposed XML stream structure also contains indexes in order to skip from the irrelevant parts over the XML stream. It therefore can reduce the energy consumption of mobile devices in downloading the results of XML queries. In addition, our proposed XML stream structure can process different types of XML queries and experimental results showed that it improves the performace of XML query processing over the XML data stream compared to the existing research works in terms of access and tuning times.

     

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.     

Comparative Analysis of XML Compression Technologies

XML provides flexibility in publishing and exchanging heterogeneous data on the Web. However, the language is by nature verbose and thus XML documents are usually larger in size than other specifications containing the same data content. It is natural to expect that the data size will continue to grow as XML data proliferates on the Web. The size problem of XML documents hinders the applications of XML, since it substantially increases the costs of storing, processing and exchanging the data. The hindrance is more apparent in bandwidth- and memory-limited settings such as those applications related to mobile communication. In this paper, we survey a range of recently proposed XML specific compression technologies and study their efforts and capabilities to overcome the size problem. First, by categorizing XML compression technologies into queriable and unqueriable compressors, we explain the efforts in the representative technologies that aim at utilizing the exposed structure information from the input XML documents. Second, we discuss the importance of queriable XML compressors and assess whether the compressed XML documents generated from these technologies are able to support direct querying on XML data. Finally, we present a comparative analysis of the state-of-the-art XML conscious compression technologies in terms of compression ratio, compression and decompression times, memory consumption, and query performance.