Comparative Analysis of Five XML Query Languages

XML is becoming the most relevant new standard for data representation and exchange on the WWW. Novel languages for extracting and restructuring the XML content have been proposed, some in the tradition of database query languages (i.e. SQL, OQL), others more closely inspired by XML. No standard for XML query language has yet been decided, but the discussion is ongoing within the World Wide Web Consortium and within many academic institutions and Internet-related major companies. We present a comparison of five, representative query languages for XML, highlighting their common features and differences.Comment: TeX v3.1415, 17 pages, 6 figures, to be published in ACM Sigmod Record, March 200

Structurally Tractable Uncertain Data

Many data management applications must deal with data which is uncertain, incomplete, or noisy. However, on existing uncertain data representations, we cannot tractably perform the important query evaluation tasks of determining query possibility, certainty, or probability: these problems are hard on arbitrary uncertain input instances. We thus ask whether we could restrict the structure of uncertain data so as to guarantee the tractability of exact query evaluation. We present our tractability results for tree and tree-like uncertain data, and a vision for probabilistic rule reasoning. We also study uncertainty about order, proposing a suitable representation, and study uncertain data conditioned by additional observations.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. To appear in SIGMOD/PODS PhD Symposium 201

Using Element Clustering to Increase the Efficiency of XML Schema Matching

Schema matching attempts to discover semantic mappings between elements of two schemas. Elements are cross compared using various heuristics (e.g., name, data-type, and structure similarity). Seen from a broader perspective, the schema matching problem is a combinatorial problem with an exponential complexity. This makes the naive matching algorithms for large schemas prohibitively inefficient. In this paper we propose a clustering based technique for improving the efficiency of large scale schema matching. The technique inserts clustering as an intermediate step into existing schema matching algorithms. Clustering partitions schemas and reduces the overall matching load, and creates a possibility to trade between the efficiency and effectiveness. The technique can be used in addition to other optimization techniques. In the paper we describe the technique, validate the performance of one implementation of the technique, and open directions for future research

Survey over Existing Query and Transformation Languages

A widely acknowledged obstacle for realizing the vision of the Semantic Web is the inability of many current Semantic Web approaches to cope with data available in such diverging representation formalisms as XML, RDF, or Topic Maps. A common query language is the first step to allow transparent access to data in any of these formats. To further the understanding of the requirements and approaches proposed for query languages in the conventional as well as the Semantic Web, this report surveys a large number of query languages for accessing XML, RDF, or Topic Maps. This is the first systematic survey to consider query languages from all these areas. From the detailed survey of these query languages, a common classification scheme is derived that is useful for understanding and differentiating languages within and among all three areas

Content-Aware DataGuides for Indexing Large Collections of XML Documents

XML is well-suited for modelling structured data with textual content. However, most indexing approaches perform structure and content matching independently, combining the retrieved path and keyword occurrences in a third step. This paper shows that retrieval in XML documents can be accelerated significantly by processing text and structure simultaneously during all retrieval phases. To this end, the Content-Aware DataGuide (CADG) enhances the wellknown DataGuide with (1) simultaneous keyword and path matching and (2) a precomputed content/structure join. Extensive experiments prove the CADG to be 50-90% faster than the DataGuide for various sorts of query and document, including difficult cases such as poorly structured queries and recursive document paths. A new query classification scheme identifies precise query characteristics with a predominant influence on the performance of the individual indices. The experiments show that the CADG is applicable to many real-world applications, in particular large collections of heterogeneously structured XML documents

Intuitionistic fuzzy XML query matching and rewriting

With the emergence of XML as a standard for data representation, particularly on the web, the need for intelligent query languages that can operate on XML documents with structural heterogeneity has recently gained a lot of popularity. Traditional Information Retrieval and Database approaches have limitations when dealing with such scenarios. Therefore, fuzzy (flexible) approaches have become the predominant. In this thesis, we propose a new approach for approximate XML query matching and rewriting which aims at achieving soft matching of XML queries with XML data sources following different schemas. Unlike traditional querying approaches, which require exact matching, the proposed approach makes use of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Trees to achieve approximate (soft) query matching. Through this new approach, not only the exact answer of a query, but also approximate answers are retrieved. Furthermore, partial results can be obtained from multiple data sources and merged together to produce a single answer to a query. The proposed approach introduced a new tree similarity measure that considers the minimum and maximum degrees of similarity/inclusion of trees that are based on arc matching. New techniques for soft node and arc matching were presented for matching queries against data sources with highly varied structures. A prototype was developed to test the proposed ideas and it proved the ability to achieve approximate matching for pattern queries with a number of XML schemas and rewrite the original query so that it obtain results from the underlying data sources. This has been achieved through several novel algorithms which were tested and proved efficiency and low CPU/Memory cost even for big number of data sources

Structure and content semantic similarity detection of eXtensible markup language documents using keys

XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) has become the fundamental standard for efficient data management and exchange. Due to the widespread use of XML for describing and exchanging data on the web, XML-based comparison is central issues in database management and information retrieval. In fact, although many heterogeneous XML sources have similar content, they may be described using different tag names and structures. This work proposes a series of algorithms for detection of structural and content changes among XML data. The first is an algorithm called XDoI (XML Data Integration Based on Content and Structure Similarity Using Keys) that clusters XML documents into subtrees using leaf-node parents as clustering points. This algorithm matches subtrees using the key concept and compares unmatched subtrees for similarities in both content and structure. The experimental results show that this approach finds much more accurate matches with or without the presence of keys in the subtrees. A second algorithm proposed here is called XDI-CSSK (a system for detecting xml similarity in content and structure using relational database); it eliminates unnecessary clustering points using instance statistics and a taxonomic analyzer. As the number of subtrees to be compared is reduced, the overall execution time is reduced dramatically. Semantic similarity plays a crucial role in precise computational similarity measures. A third algorithm, called XML-SIM (structure and content semantic similarity detection using keys) is based on previous work to detect XML semantic similarity based on structure and content. This algorithm is an improvement over XDI-CSSK and XDoI in that it determines content similarity based on semantic structural similarity. In an experimental evaluation, it outperformed previous approaches in terms of both execution time and false positive rates. Information changes periodically; therefore, it is important to be able to detect changes among different versions of an XML document and use that information to identify semantic similarities. Finally, this work introduces an approach to detect XML similarity and thus to join XML document versions using a change detection mechanism. In this approach, subtree keys still play an important role in order to avoid unnecessary subtree comparisons within multiple versions of the same document. Real data sets from bibliographic domains demonstrate the effectiveness of all these algorithms --Abstract, page iv-v