Foundational Data Modeling and Schema Transformations for XML Data Engineering

Abstract

As XML data storage and interchange become ubiquitous, analysts and data engineers increasingly need tools to model their data and map it to XML schemas and to reverse engineer XML documents and schemas in support of evolution and integration activities. For effective data management, model transformations require guarantees of properties of interest including guarantees of information and constraintpreservation, redundancy-free and compactness guarantees, and assurances about readability and maintainability. In this paper, we make foundational observations about XML data management, including conceptual modeling for XML data, transformations to and from XML Schema and XML data models, and transformation guarantees concerning properties of interest, and we provide resolutions for conceptual mismatches between XML data management and more traditional data management. Our implemented prototype tools show that these observations and insights can provide a strong foundation for XML data engineering.