Abstract
Based on the recursion mechanism of the XML transformation language XSL, the document transformation language DTL is defined. First the instantiation DTL reg is considered that uses regular expressions as pattern language. This instantiation closely resembles the navigation mechanism of XSL. For DTL reg the complexity of relevant decision problems such as termination of programs, usefulness of rules and equivalence of selection patterns, is addressed. Next, a much more powerful abstraction of XSL is considered that uses monadic second-order logic formulas as pattern language (DTL mso). If DTL mso is restricted to top-down transformations (DTL mso d ), then a computational model can be defined which is a natural generalization to unranked trees of topdown tree transducers with look-ahead. The look-ahead can be realized by a straightforward bottom-up pre-processing pass through the document. The size of the output of an XSL program is at most exponential in the size of the input. By restricting copying in XSL a decidable fragment of DTL mso d programs is obtained which induces transformations of linear size increase (safe DTL mso d ). It is shown that the emptiness and finiteness problems are decidable for ranges of DTL mso d programs and that the ranges are closed under intersection with generalized Document Type Definitions (DTDs).
The work of this author was supported by the EC TMR Network GETGRATS. Research Assistant of the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders.
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Maneth, S., Neven, F. (2000). Structured Document Transformations Based on XSL. In: Connor, R., Mendelzon, A. (eds) Research Issues in Structured and Semistructured Database Programming. DBPL 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1949. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44543-9_6
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