Preserving Constraints in XML Data Exchange

Executive Summary

The goal of this research project is to study the interplay between constraints and mappings from XML to XML sources, or XML to relational data sources. The approach consists of developing a language (or languages) that are sufficiently expressive to capture interesting classes of constraints, structure and mappings, and techniques for reasoning about how constraints are translated through these mappings. Using these techniques, algorithms for reasoning about the correctness of mappings with respect to constraints will be developed. Since an XML view also represents a mapping between two different XML sources, one of which is virtual, the related question of how to map an update on an XML view to the underlying data source will also be considered.

The results of this work will provide the ability to detect whether or not semantic conflicts will arise before data exchange actually occurs, thus avoiding time-consuming and unanticipated errors as data loading is performed at the target site. Since data exchange occurs in many different application domains, for example e-commerce, science, and government, the impact will be broadly applicable to all these areas.

The research performed will be included in an advanced database course taught by the PI, and undergraduate students will be involved in the research through a senior projects course.

Demos:
Vitex demo is available here.

Some references

• Propagating XML Constraints to Relations [.pdf] [ERRATUM] 
  Journal of Computer and System Sciences 73:3 (May 2007), pp. 316-361 (2007)
  Carmem Hara   Wenfei Fan   Susan Davidson   
  

• PATAXO: a framework to allow updates through XML views [.pdf] 
  ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) 31:3 (Sept. 2006), pp. 839-886 (2006)
  Vanessa Braganholo   Susan Davidson   Carlos A. Heuser   
  

• Path-based systems to guide life scientists in the maze of biological data sources. [.pdf] 
  Journal of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology 4:5 (October 2006), pp. 1069-1095 (2006)
  Sarah Cohen Boulakia   Susan Davidson   Christine Froidevaux   Zoe Lacroix   Maria-Esther Vidal   
  

• Efficient Scientific Data Management over Trees
  (current, projected graduation date August 2006) (2006)
  Yifeng Zheng   
  

• Models for Incomplete and Probabilistic Information [.pdf] 
  International Workshop on Incompleteness and Inconsistency in Databases (IIDB) (2006)
  Todd J. Green   Val Tannen   
  

• Models for Incomplete and Probabilistic Information [.ps] 
  IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin (2006)
  Todd J. Green   Val Tannen   
  

• ViteX : a Streaming XPath Processing System [.pdf] 
  International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) (demo) (2005)
  Yi Chen   Susan Davidson   Yifeng Zheng   
  

• Efficient XPath Query Processing on Stored and Streaming XML Data [.pdf] 
  Excerpt from PhD Thesis Yi Chen (2005)
  Yi Chen   
  

• From XML View Updates to Relational View Updates: old solutions to a new problem [abstract] [.pdf] 
  International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB) (2004)
  Vanessa Braganholo   Susan Davidson   Carlos Heuser   
  

• Reasoning About Functional And Key Dependencies in Hierarchically Structured Data [.pdf] 
  Excerpt from PhD Thesis Carmem Hara (2004)
  Carmem Hara   
  

• From XML to Relational View Updates: applying old solutions to solve a new problem
  Excerpt from PhD Thesis Vanessa P Braganholo (2004)
  Vanessa Braganholo   
  

• UXQuery: building updatable XML views over relational databases [abstract] [.pdf] 
  Proceedings of the Brazilian Symposium on Databases (Voted one of the top 5 papers in the conference) (2003)
  Vanessa Braganholo   Susan Davidson   Carlos Heuser   
  

Project Members

Funding