Conversion of XML schema design styles with StyleVolution

Purpose \u2013 Any XML schema definition can be organized according to one of the following design styles: \u201cRussian Doll\u201d, \u201cSalami Slice\u201d, \u201cVenetian Blind\u201d and \u201cGarden of Eden\u201d (with the additional \u201cBologna\u201d 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 \u2013 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 \u201cGarden of Eden\u201d style, which has been chosen as a normalized XML schema format, and three for converting from the \u201cGarden of Eden\u201d style to any of the other desired design styles. Findings \u2013 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 inputXML schema to a schema design style. Originality/value \u2013 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