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Regular Query Techniques for XML-Documents

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Linguistic Modeling of Information and Markup Languages

Part of the book series: Text, Speech and Language Technology ((TLTB,volume 41))

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Abstract

In this contribution we propose a query method for XML documents that provides a well chosen balance between expressive power of the query language and query complexity using methods derived from logic. Since XML documents are basically regular tree languages, it is appealing to use monadic second-order logic as a query language. But MSO is incapable of querying secondary relations in XML documents introduced via the ID-IDREF mechanism. We therefore show how a well-defined subclass of these ID-IDREF pairs can be queried using MSO, signature translations, and MSO-definable transductions. The ID-IDREF pairs will be coded by linear context-free tree grammars. And any query result is intersected with the coding of the ID-IDREF pairs to ensure only those matches are retained that respect the ID-IDREF informations contained in the document. The advantage of this method is that it uses regular techniques only. In consequence every query is computable.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a DFG grant (SFB 441).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Theoretical Computational Linguistics Group, Linguistics Department, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Stephan Kepser, Uwe Mönnich & Frank Morawietz

Authors
  1. Stephan Kepser
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  2. Uwe Mönnich
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  3. Frank Morawietz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephan Kepser .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS), Mannheim, 68161, Germany

    Andreas Witt

  2. Fak. Linguistik und, Universität Bielefeld, Universitätsstraße, Bielefeld, 33615, Germany

    Dieter Metzing

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Kepser, S., Mönnich, U., Morawietz, F. (2010). Regular Query Techniques for XML-Documents. In: Witt, A., Metzing, D. (eds) Linguistic Modeling of Information and Markup Languages. Text, Speech and Language Technology, vol 41. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3331-4_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3331-4_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-3330-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-90-481-3331-4

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