A new algorithm for mapping XML Schema to XML Schema

Abstract

XML and its schema language mainly built to encode documents electronically are widely used for a variety of purposes in modern programming. XML Schema is developed in the context of a domain specific terminology. Schema mapping describes the semantic correspondences between the components of two XML Schema documents. An XML Schema document describes the information that resides in an XML document using the XML Schema Definition Language (XSD). Therefore, an XML Schema document should be parsed differently than an XML document, in order to extract the proper information from it. This paper introduces a new solution for the XML Schema matching and mapping problem consisting of a novel approach to the internal representation of XML Schema documents during the matching process. The solution is based on the XML object model. The use of an object model for the XML Schema document representation within the mapping and matching software tool produces the following benefits: (1) the XML Schema document internal representation conforms to the XML Schema Definition Language standard specifications, (2) a better scalability of the software tool, (3) the matching engine is developed based on object-oriented design patterns such as the Composite and the Chain of Responsibility, (4) flexibility of the matching engine and (5) tractability of very complex XML Schema documents. The given examples illustrate plainly the new method presented in this paper.