Designing Valid XML Views

Abstract

Existing systems for XML views only support selection operation applied in the views and cannot validate views. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach to design valid XML views. First, we transform the semistructured XML source documents into a semantically rich Object-Relationship-Attribute model designed for SemLStructured data (ORA-SS). Second, we enrich the ORA-SS diagram with semantics such as participation constraints of object classes and distinguishing between attributes of object classes and relationship types, which cannot be expressed in the XML document. Third, we use the additional semantics to develop a set of rules to guide the design of valid XML views. We identify four transformation operations for creating XML views, namely, selection, projection, join and swap operation. Finally, we develop a comprehensive algorithm that checks for the validity of XML views constructed by applying the four operations.