Formal transformation from fuzzy object-oriented databases to fuzzy XML

Abstract

XML has become the standard for publishing and exchanging data on the Web. Since most of the business data nowadays are stored in structured databases including relational and object-oriented databases (OODB), it is of significance to automate the transformation process and generate the XML data containing information from existing databases. At the same time, information imprecision and uncertainty exist in many practical applications, and for this reason, fuzzy data modeling has been extensively investigated in various data models. As such, there is an increasing need to effectively publish fuzzy structured data as fuzzy XML documents for Web-based applications. In this paper, we take a significant step in a fundamental consolidation of fuzzy XML. In particular, we are interested in finding an XML schema that best describes the existing fuzzy object-oriented schema. To accomplish this, we first offer mapping formalisms to capture the semantics of fuzzy XML Schema and fuzzy object-oriented schema. To allow for better and platform independent sharing of data stored in an object-oriented format, we investigate the formal transformation from fuzzy OODB to fuzzy XML and develop a set of rules to assist in the transformation process.