Querying XML data streams from wireless sensor networks: an evaluation of query engines

As the deployment of wireless sensor networks increase and their application domain widens, the opportunity for effective use of XML filtering and streaming query engines is ever more present. XML filtering engines aim to provide efficient real-time querying of streaming XML encoded data. This paper provides a detailed analysis of several such engines, focusing on the technology involved, their capabilities, their support for XPath and their performance. Our experimental evaluation identifies which filtering engine is best suited to process a given query based on its properties. Such metrics are important in establishing the best approach to filtering XML streams on-the-fly

Reasoning & Querying – State of the Art

Various query languages for Web and Semantic Web data, both for practical use and as an area of research in the scientific community, have emerged in recent years. At the same time, the broad adoption of the internet where keyword search is used in many applications, e.g. search engines, has familiarized casual users with using keyword queries to retrieve information on the internet. Unlike this easy-to-use querying, traditional query languages require knowledge of the language itself as well as of the data to be queried. Keyword-based query languages for XML and RDF bridge the gap between the two, aiming at enabling simple querying of semi-structured data, which is relevant e.g. in the context of the emerging Semantic Web. This article presents an overview of the field of keyword querying for XML and RDF

Approximative filtering of XML documents in a publish/subscribe system

Publish/subscribe systems filter published documents and inform their subscribers about documents matching their interests. Recent systems have focussed on documents or messages sent in XML format. Subscribers have to be familiar with the underlying XML format to create meaningful subscriptions. A service might support several providers with slightly differing formats, e.g., several publishers of books. This makes the definition of a successful subscription almost impossible. This paper proposes the use of an approximative language for subscriptions. We introduce the design of our ApproXFilter algorithm for approximative filtering in a publish/subscribe system. We present the results of our performance analysis of a prototypical implementation

Evaluating linear XPath expressions by pattern-matching automata

Abstract: We consider the problem of efficiently evaluating a large number of XPath expressions, especially in the case when they define subscriber profiles for filtering of XML documents. For each document in an XML document stream, the task is to determine those profiles that match the document. In this article we present a new general method for filtering with profiles expressed by linear XPath expressions with child operators (/), descendant operators (//), and wildcards ( * ). This new filtering algorithm is based on a backtracking deterministic finite automaton derived from the classic Aho-Corasick pattern-matching automaton. This automaton has a size linear in the sum of the sizes of the XPath filters, and the worst-case time bound of the algorithm is much less than the time bound of the simulation of linear-size nondeterministic automata. Our new algorithm has a predecessor that can handle child and descendant operators but not wildcards, and has been shown to be extremely efficient when a documenttype definition (DTD) has been used to prune out all the wildcards and most of the descendant operators. But in some cases, such as when the DTD is highly recursive, it may not be possible to prune out all wildcards without producing a too large set of filters. Then it is important to have the full generality of an evaluation algorithm, as presented in this article, that can also handle wildcards

STRUCTURED DOCUMENT LOGIC

This paper describes some practical and theoretical foundations of Structured Document Logic (SDL), which is a logical methodology for analyzing properties of Web documents, like XML or HTML. SDL can make benefits in searching of HTML pages, or in defining filters for web documents. Both syntax and semantics of SDL are described, and an efficient evaluation algorithm is also introduced

Web and Semantic Web Query Languages

A number of techniques have been developed to facilitate powerful data retrieval on the Web and Semantic Web. Three categories of Web query languages can be distinguished, according to the format of the data they can retrieve: XML, RDF and Topic Maps. This article introduces the spectrum of languages falling into these categories and summarises their salient aspects. The languages are introduced using common sample data and query types. Key aspects of the query languages considered are stressed in a conclusion