Abstract
XML has evolved from a document markup language to a data model commonly and widely used for storing, exchanging and sharing hierarchically (semi)structured data. Simultaneously relational model is still a production standard for storing and querying data. Since there are on the market so many advanced and mature, relational– and sql–based tools, systems and solutions just loading xml documents into relational model (for instance as BLOBs) would be the easiest way for storing and then processing XML data.
Unfortunately, in such a way, hierarchical and (semi)structured data becomes flat and unstructured. That is why so many effort is made to provide efficient models and tools for storing and processing XML data and such solutions as XPath or XQuery have been proposed and become a standard in this field. It results however in developing heterogenous and not unified data storing and processing standards, models and tools. It is similar to well-known object-relational impedance mismatch.
Taking its power, scientific foundations, available tools and flexibility as well as ,,assumed and hidden knowledge”(everybody knows it) it would be great to process XML documents effectively with the use of SQL queries.
There are of course tools responsible for mapping between XML and relational model on the market. Using them however results often that either hierarchical data structure is lost and/or manual transformation (or at least transformation definition) is required.
In this paper the concept of transformation of XML data into quasi–relational model is proposed. The general assumption of this transformation is making it possible to process XML document with the use of SQL-like language without making manual transformation and with preserving hierarchical structure of XML data.
The research reported in the paper was partially supported by grants No. 0008/R/ID1/2011/01 and No. DOBR-BIO4/060/13423/2013 from the Polish National Centre for Research and Development.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
The xpath 2.0 standard (2007), http://www.network-theory.co.uk/w3c/xpath/
Balmin, A., Özcan, F., Singh, A., Ting, E.: Grouping and optimization of xpath expressions in db2 purexml. In: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, SIGMOD 2008, pp. 1065–1074. ACM, New York (2008), http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1376616.1376722
Codd, E.F.: A relational model of data for large shared data banks. Commun. ACM 13(6), 377–387 (1970)
Hidders, J., Paredaens, J.: Xpath/xquery. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds.) Encyclopedia of Database Systems, pp. 3659–3665. Springer US (2009)
Kappel, G., Kapsammer, E., Retschitzegger, W.: Xml and relational database systems - a comparison of concepts. In: Proceedings of the 2001 International Conference on Internet Computing, pp. 199–205. CSREA Press, Las Vegas (2001)
Krishnaprasad, M., Liu, Z.H., Manikutty, A., Warner, J.W., Arora, V., Kotsovolos, S.: Query rewrite for xml in oracle xml db. In: Proceedings of the Thirtieth International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, VLDB 2004, vol. 30, pp. 1134–1145, VLDB Endowment (2004), http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1316689.1316786
Marcjan, R., Wyrostek, J.: Processing xml documents on the basis of quasi-relational model and sqlxd language. Studia Informatica 32(2A), 111–120 (2011)
Mlynkova, I.: An xml-to-relational user-driven mapping strategy based on similarity and adaptivity. In: SYRCoDIS (2007)
Nicola, M., Kumar-Chatterjee, P.: DB2 pureXML Cookbook: Master the Power of the IBM Hybrid Data Server, 1st edn. IBM Press (2009)
Noh, S.Y., Gadia, S., Jang, H.: Comparisons of three data storage models in parametric temporal databases. Journal of Central South University 20(7), 1919–1927 (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11771-013-1691-8
Pal, S., Fussel, M., Dolobovsky, I.: Xml support in microsoft sql server 2005. TechNet Library (2005), http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345117v=sql.90.aspx
Pal, S., Cseri, I., Seeliger, O., Rys, M., Schaller, G., Yu, W., Tomic, D., Baras, A., Berg, B., Churin, D., Kogan, E.: Xquery implementation in a relational database system. In: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, VLDB 2005, pp. 1175–1186. VLDB Endowment (2005)
Runapongsa, K., Patel, J.M.: Storing and querying XML data in object-relational DBMSs. In: Chaudhri, A.B., Unland, R., Djeraba, C., Lindner, W. (eds.) EDBT 2002. LNCS, vol. 2490, pp. 266–285. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Rys, M., Chamberlin, D., Florescu, D.: Xml and relational database management systems: the inside story. In: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, SIGMOD 2005, pp. 945–947 (2005), http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1066157.1066298
Samokhvalov, N.: Xml support in postgresql. In: SYRCoDIS (2007)
Silberschatz, A., Korth, H.F., Sudarshan, S.: Database system concepts, 6th edn. McGraw-Hill, New York (2010), http://www.db-book.com/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Marcjan, R., Siwik, L. (2014). The Concept of Transformation of XML Documents into Quasi-Relational Model. In: Kozielski, S., Mrozek, D., Kasprowski, P., Małysiak-Mrozek, B., Kostrzewa, D. (eds) Beyond Databases, Architectures, and Structures. BDAS 2014. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 424. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06932-6_55
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06932-6_55
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-06931-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-06932-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)