Digital Symposium Collection 2000  

 
 
 
 
 
 

 



















Relational Databases for Querying XML Documents: Limitations and Opportunities

Jayavel Shanmugasundaram, Kristin Tufte, Chun Zhang, Gang He, David J. DeWitt, and Jeffrey F. Naughton

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Return to Semistructured Data & XML Queries

Abstract
XML is fast emerging as the dominant standard for representing data in the World Wide Web. Sophisticated query engines that allow users to effectively tap the data stored in XML documents will be crucial to exploiting the full power of XML. While there has been a great deal of activity recently proposing new semistructured data models and query languages for this purpose, this paper explores the more conservative approach of using traditional relational database engines for processing XML documents conforming to Document Type Descriptors (DTDs). To this end, we have developed algorithms and implemented a prototype system that converts XML documents to relational tuples, translates semi-structured queries over XML documents to SQL queries over tables, and converts the results to XML. We have qualitatively evaluated this approach using several real DTDs drawn from diverse domains. It turns out that the relational approach can handle most (but not all) of the semantics of semi-structured queries over XML data, but is likely to be effective only in some cases. We identify the causes for these limitations and propose certain extensions to the relational model that would make it more appropriate for processing queries over XML documents.


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Referenced by

  1. Michael J. Carey : Review - Relational Databases for Querying XML Documents: Limitations and Opportunities. ACM SIGMOD Digital Review 2 : (2000)
  2. H. V. Jagadish : Review - Relational Databases for Querying XML Documents: Limitations and Opportunities. ACM SIGMOD Digital Review 1 : (1999)

BIBTEX

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/vldb/ShanmugasundaramGTZDN99,
  author    = {Jayavel Shanmugasundaram and
                Kristin Tufte and
                Chun Zhang and
                Gang He and
                David J. DeWitt and
                Jeffrey F. Naughton},
   editor    = {Malcolm P. Atkinson and
                Maria E. Orlowska and
                Patrick Valduriez and
                Stanley B. Zdonik and
                Michael L. Brodie},
   title     = {Relational Databases for Querying XML Documents: Limitations
                and Opportunities},
   booktitle = {VLDB'99, Proceedings of 25th International Conference on Very
                Large Data Bases, September 7-10, 1999, Edinburgh, Scotland,
                UK},
   publisher = {Morgan Kaufmann},
   year      = {1999},
   isbn      = {1-55860-615-5},
   pages     = {302-314},
   crossref  = {DBLP:conf/vldb/99},
   bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de} } },


























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