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XML indexing and storage: fulfilling the wish list

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Computer Science - Research and Development

Abstract

XML Indexing and Storage (XMIS) techniques are crucial for the functionality and the overall performance of an XML database management system (XDBMS). Because of the complexity of XQuery and performance demands of XML query processing, efficient path processing operators—including those for tree-pattern queries (so-called twigs)—are urgently needed for which tailor-made indexes and their flexible use are indispensable. Although XML indexing and storage are standard problems and, of course, manifold approaches have been proposed in the last decade, adaptive and broad-enough solutions for satisfactory query evaluation support of all path processing operators are missing in the XDBMS context. Therefore, we think that it is worthwhile to take a step back and look at the complete picture to derive a salient and holistic solution. To do so, we first compile an XMIS wish list containing what—in our opinion—are essential functional storage and indexing requirements in a modern XDBMS. With these desiderata in mind, we then develop a new XMIS scheme, which—by reconsidering previous work—can be seen as a practical and general approach to XML storage and indexing. Interestingly, by working on both problems at the same time, we can make the storage and index managers live in a kind of symbiotic partnership, because the document store re-uses ideas originally proposed by the indexing community and vice versa. The XMIS scheme is implemented in XTC, an XDBMS used for empirical tests.

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Notes

  1. To avoid an application-specific focus, these properties are not ranked. For a universal approach, all properties should have the same importance.

  2. All variations of document stores and index types are implemented using B*-trees. With code reuse for the base structures, the tree entries only differ in the representation of keys and values.

  3. In the following, we are only interested in the path up to the root for a given PCR. Therefore, the relative order among siblings is not relevant, e.g., all permutations of elements issn, name, publisher, and issue as children of journal may appear in the document.

  4. For uniprot, the structure-related saving of the pc and po formats consists of 465 and 731 Mbytes w.r.t. the naive format. Content compression would reduce the content part by 23–35%, in addition.

  5. Although we simplified the path specification for presentation purposes, their XPath equivalent is used to express twig queries as well by simply combining several path specifications (join) and, thereby, allowing their application for twig operators.

  6. Note, subscript D and type T are omitted where non-ambiguous.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Computer Science, University of Kaiserslautern, P.O. Box 3049, 67663, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Christian Mathis, Theo Härder, Karsten Schmidt & Sebastian Bächle

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  1. Christian Mathis
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  2. Theo Härder
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  3. Karsten Schmidt
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  4. Sebastian Bächle
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Correspondence to Theo Härder.

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Mathis, C., Härder, T., Schmidt, K. et al. XML indexing and storage: fulfilling the wish list. Comput Sci Res Dev 30, 51–68 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00450-012-0204-6

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