Tractable XML data exchange via relations

Abstract

We consider data exchange for XML documents: given source and target schemas, a mapping between them, and a document conforming to the source schema, construct a target document and answer target queries in a way that is consistent with source information. The problem has primarily been studied in the relational context, in which data-exchange systems have also been built. Since many XML documents are stored in relations, it is natural to consider using a relational system for XML data exchange. However, there is a complexity mismatch between query answering in relational and XML data exchange, which indicates that restrictions have to be imposed on XML schemas and mappings, and on XML shredding schemes, to make the use of relational systems possible. We isolate a set of five requirements that must be fulfilled in order to have a faithful representation of the XML data-exchange problem by a relational translation. We then demonstrate that these requirements naturally suggest the inlining technique for dataexchange tasks. Our key contribution is to provide shredding algorithms for schemas, documents, mappings and queries, and demonstrate that they enable us to correctly perform XML data-exchange tasks using a relational system.