W3C XML Schema Research Articles

Using XML schemas to structure information models of capital construction facilities

Introduction. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is an auspicious approach that supports management and exchange of semantically rich 3D models across design disciplines. Recently, BIM has gained widespread acceptance in the AEC industry, and it improves the efficiency and quality of the process by facilitating the early exchange of 3D building models. At different stages of the life cycle, a building information model is gradually refined from rough conceptual design to detailed individual components. The task is to develop mechanisms for machine verification (authentication) of data transmitted to/from different systems (for example, from a customer to an expert evaluation authority, from a contractor to the urban planning management information system or any other state information system) in the form of an information model of capital construction facilities or certain components of an information model.
 Materials and methods. To substantiate the choice of the language employed to describe machine-readable documents, various use cases of XML schemas were analyzed, including the use of the Google Trends tool. Information systems, implemented in the Russian Federation, were also considered. Most of them use the W3C XML Schema language to describe XSD schemas.
 Results. A consolidated list of XML schemas, necessary and sufficient to maintain stages of the life cycle of a capital construction facility in terms of interaction with the Urban Planning Management Information System is presented. To ensure interaction between the life cycle participants and state information systems, it is necessary to have the list of XML schemas approved at the federal level. The paper presents matrixes of scenarios for the application of XML schemas in the following coordinates: participants, life cycle stages.
 Conclusions. XML schemas can be supplemented in respect of various stages of a life cycle of a capital construction faci-lity to be verified with due regard for further methodological approaches and changes in regulatory and technical acts; new approaches and the need for this supplementation must be substantiated.

New Interface Complexity Metric on XML Schema

With increasing usage of a web services today, user required to consecrate reasoning energy to learning the complexities of the interface as opposed to the content. Interface complexity measures the degree of complexity encountered between the user and digital medium like website. This paper presents a New Interface Complexity (NIC) Metric, which partially based on existing schema metrics to weigh human insight of recent service interface; taking into account elements and attributes of XML documents implemented in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML Schema (WXS) to reduce the structure affecting the effort for comprehending schema documents. The NIC metric is able to draw conclusions about the perceived qualities: interoperability, extensibility and flexibility. It was discovered that there are significant correlations between NIC metric and existing measures. Automating, this practice would be beneficial to developers and designers, as it would help to provide useful feedback in software project design to check the quality of documents for easy maintenance and properly used of XML data for distributed applications.

Reasoning about integrity constraints for tree-structured data

We study a class of integrity constraints for tree-structured data modelled as data trees, whose nodes have a label from a finite alphabet and store a data value from an infinite data domain. The constraints require each tuple of nodes selected by a conjunctive query (using navigational axes and labels) to satisfy a positive combination of equalities and a positive combination of inequalities over the stored data values. Such constraints are instances of the general framework of XML-to-relational constraints proposed recently by Niewerth and Schwentick. They cover some common classes of constraints, including W3C XML Schema key and unique constraints, as well as domain restrictions and denial constraints, but cannot express inclusion constraints, such as reference keys. Our main result is that consistency of such integrity constraints with respect to a given schema (modelled as a tree automaton) is decidable. An easy extension gives decidability for the entailment problem. Equivalently, we show that validity and containment of unions of conjunctive queries using navigational axes, labels, data equalities and inequalities is decidable, as long as none of the conjunctive queries uses both equalities and inequalities; without this restriction, both problems are known to be undecidable. In the context of XML data exchange, our result can be used to establish decidability for a consistency problem for XML schema mappings. All the decision procedures are doubly exponential, with matching lower bounds. The complexity may be lowered to singly exponential, when conjunctive queries are replaced by tree patterns, and the number of data comparisons is bounded.

Solar Lab Notebook (SLN): An Ultra-Portable Web-Based System for Heliophysics and High-Security Labs

This paper introduces the Solar Lab Notebook (SLN), an electronic lab notebook for improving the process of recording and sharing solar related digital information in an organized manner. SLN is a pure web-based application (available online: http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/sln) that runs client-side only, employing a clean and very friendly graphical user interface design, and thus providing a true cross-platform user experience. Furthermore, SLN leverages unique technologies offered by modern web browsers, such as the FileReader API, the Blob interface and Local Storage mechanism; it is coded entirely using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, and powered by the extremely well documented XML file format. For high-security labs, it can be utilized as an ultra-portable and secure digital notebook solution, since it is functionally self-contained, and does not require any server-side process running on either the local or a remote system. Finally, the W3C XML Schema language is used to define a list of rules, namely a data standard, that an SLN file must conform to in order to be valid. In this way, developers are able to implement their own validation functions in their projects, or use one of the freely available tools to check if a data file is properly structured. Similarly, scientific groups at different labs can easily share information, being confident about the integrity of the exchanged data.

CcML, a new mark-up language to improve ISO/EN 13606-based electronic health record extracts practical edition.

ObjectiveThe objective of this paper is to introduce a new language called ccML, designed to provide convenient pragmatic information to applications using the ISO/EN13606 reference model (RM), such as electronic health record (EHR) extracts editors. EHR extracts are presently built using the syntactic and semantic information provided in the RM and constrained by archetypes. The ccML extra information enables the automation of the medico-legal context information edition, which is over 70% of the total in an extract, without modifying the RM information.Materials and MethodsccML is defined using a W3C XML schema file. Valid ccML files complement the RM with additional pragmatics information. The ccML language grammar is defined using formal language theory as a single-type tree grammar. The new language is tested using an EHR extracts editor application as proof-of-concept system.ResultsSeven ccML PVCodes (predefined value codes) are introduced in this grammar to cope with different realistic EHR edition situations. These seven PVCodes have different interpretation strategies, from direct look up in the ccML file itself, to more complex searches in archetypes or system precomputation.DiscussionThe possibility to declare generic types in ccML gives rise to ambiguity during interpretation. The criterion used to overcome ambiguity is that specificity should prevail over generality. The opposite would make the individual specific element declarations useless.ConclusionA new mark-up language ccML is introduced that opens up the possibility of providing applications using the ISO/EN13606 RM with the necessary pragmatics information to be practical and realistic.

Formal Models and Algorithms for XML Data Interoperability

In this paper, we study the data interoperability problem of web services in terms of XML schema compatibility. When Web Service A sends XML messages to Web Service B, A is interoperable with B if B can accept all messages from A. That is, the XML schema R for B to receive XML instances must be compatible with the XML schema S for A to send XML instances, Le., A is a subschema of B. We propose a formal model called Schema Automaton (SA) to model W3C XML Schema (XSD) and develop several algorithms to perform different XML schema computations. The computations include schema minimization, schema equivalence testing, subschema testing, and subschema extraction. We have conducted experiments on an e-commerce standard XSD called xCBL to demonstrate the practicality of our algorithms. One experiment has refuted the claim that the xCBL 3.5 XSD is backward compatible with the xCBL 3.0 XSD. Another experiment has shown that the xCBL XSDs can be effectively trimmed into small subschemas for specific applications, which has significantly reduced the schema processing time.

Semantic Validation of Standard-based Electronic Health Record Documents with W3C XML Schema

The goal of this article is to examine whether W3C XML Schema provides a practicable solution for the semantic validation of standard-based electronic health record (EHR) documents. With semantic validation we mean that the EHR documents are checked for conformance with the underlying archetypes and reference model. We describe an approach that allows XML Schemas to be derived from archetypes based on a specific naming convention. The archetype constraints are augmented with additional components of the reference model within the XML Schema representation. A copy of the EHR document that is transformed according to the before-mentioned naming convention is used for the actual validation against the XML Schema. We tested our approach by semantically validating EHR documents conformant to three different ISO/EN 13606 archetypes respective to three sections of the CDA implementation guide "Continuity of Care Document (CCD)" and an implementation guide for diabetes therapy data. We further developed a tool to automate the different steps of our semantic validation approach. For two particular kinds of archetype prescriptions, individual transformations are required for the corresponding EHR documents. Otherwise, a fully generic validation is possible. In general, we consider W3C XML Schema as a practicable solution for the semantic validation of standard-based EHR documents.

Measuring and Evaluating a Design Complexity Metric for XML Schema Documents

The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) has been gaining extraordinary acceptance from many diverse enterprise software companies for their object repositories, data interchange, and development tools. Further, many different domains, organizations and content providers have been publishing and exchanging information via internet by the usage of XML and standard schemas. Efficient implementation of XML in these domains requires well designed XML schemas. In this point of view, design of XML schemas plays an extremely important role in software development process and needs to be quantified for ease of maintainability. In this paper, an attempt has been made to evaluate the quality of XML schema documents (XSD) written in W3C XML Schema language. We propose a metric, which measures the complexity due to the internal architecture of XSD components, and due to recursion. This is the single metric, which cover all major factors responsible for complexity of XSD. The metric has been empirically and theoretically validated, demonstrated with examples and supported by comparison with other well known structure metrics applied on XML schema documents.

EUDEVS: Executable UML with DEVS Theory of Modeling and Simulation

Modeling and simulation (M&S) for system design and prototyping is practiced today both in industry and academia. M&S are two different areas altogether and have specific objectives. However, most of the time these two separate areas are taken together. The developed code is woven tightly around both the model and the underlying simulator that executes it. This constrains both the model development and the simulation engine that has an impact on the scalability of the developed code. Furthermore, a lot of time is spent in developing a model because it needs both domain knowledge and simulation techniques, which also requires communication among users and developers. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is widely accepted in industry, whereas discrete event specification (DEVS)-based modeling that separates the model and the simulator, provides a cleaner methodology to develop models and is much used in academia. DEVS today is used by engineers who understand discrete event modeling at a highly detailed level and are able to translate requirements to DEVS modeling code. There have been earlier efforts to integrate UML and DEVS but they have not succeeded in providing a transformation mechanism owing to inherent differences in these two modeling paradigms. In this paper we present an integrated approach to cross-transformations between UML and DEVS using the proposed eUDEVS, which stands for executable UML based on DEVS. Further, we also show that the obtained DEVS models belong to a specific class of DEVS models called finite deterministic DEVS (FD-DEVS) that is available as a W3C XML schema in XFD-DEVS. We also put the proposed eUDEVS in a much larger unifying framework called the DEVS unified process that allows bifurcated model-continuity-based lifecycle methodology for systems M&S. Finally, we demonstrate the concepts with a complete example.

Validating quicksand: Temporal schema versioning in τXSchema

The W3C XML Schema recommendation defines the structure and data types for XML documents, but lacks explicit support for time-varying XML documents or for a time-varying schema. In previous work we introduced τXSchema, which is an infrastructure and suite of tools to support the creation and validation of time-varying documents, without requiring any changes to XML Schema. In this paper we extend τXSchema to support versioning of the schema itself. We introduce the concept of a bundle, which is an XML document that references a base (non-temporal) schema, temporal annotations describing how the document can change, and physical annotations describing where timestamps are placed. When the schema is versioned, the base schema and temporal and physical schemas can themselves be time-varying documents, each with their own (possibly versioned) schemas. We describe how the validator can be extended to validate documents in this seeming precarious situation of data that changes over time, while its schema and even its representation are also changing.

XML schema, tree logic and sheaves automata

XML documents may be roughly described as unranked, ordered trees and it is therefore natural to use tree automata to process or validate them. This idea has already been successfully applied in the context of Document Type Definition (DTD), the simplest standard for defining document validity, but additional work is needed to take into account XML Schema, a more advanced standard, for which regular tree automata are not satisfactory. In this paper, we introduce Sheaves Logic (SL), a new tree logic that extends the syntax of the – recursion-free fragment of – W3C XML Schema Definition Language (WXS). Then, we define a new class of automata for unranked trees that provides decision procedures for the basic questions about SL: model-checking; satisfiability; entailment. The same class of automata is also used to answer basic questions about WXS, including recursive schemas: decidability of type-checking documents; testing the emptiness of schemas; testing that a schema subsumes another one.

Taxonomy of XML schema languages using formal language theory

On the basis of regular tree grammars, we present a formal framework for XML schema languages. This framework helps to describe, compare, and implement such schema languages in a rigorous manner. Our main results are as follows: (1) a simple framework to study three classes of tree languages (local, single-type, and regular); (2) classification and comparison of schema languages (DTD, W3C XML Schema, and RELAX NG) based on these classes; (3) efficient document validation algorithms for these classes; and (4) other grammatical concepts and advanced validation algorithms relevant to an XML model (e.g., binarization, derivative-based validation).

XML-based requirements engineering for an electronic clearinghouse

We present methods and tools to support XML-based requirements engineering for an electronic clearinghouse that connects trading partners in the telecommunications area. The original semi-structured requirements, locally known as business rules, were written as message specifications in a non-standardized and error-prone format using MS Word. To remedy the resulting software failures and faults, we first formalized the requirements by designing an W3C XML Schema for the precise definition of the requirements structure. The schema allows a highly structured representation of the essential information in eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Second, to offer the requirements engineers the ability to edit the XML documents in a friendly way while preserving their information structure, we developed a custom editor called XLEdit. Third, by developing a converter from MS Word to the target XML format, we helped the requirements engineers to migrate the existing business rules. Fourth, we developed translators from the structured requirements to schema languages, which enabled automated generation of message-validation code. The increase in customer satisfaction and clearinghouse-service efficiency are primary gains from the investment in the technology for structured requirements editing and validation.

ER2XML :개체-관계 모델을 기반으로한 XML Schema 생성기의 구현

XML이 웹 상에서 문서 교환의 표준으로 자리잡고 있으며 피 수요가 나날이 증가하고 있다. 그에 따라 in 데이터나 문서 구조를 모델링하는 XML Schema(W3C XML Schema Spec) 또한 수요가 증가하고 있다. 그러나 XML Schema는 다양한 자료형과 풍부한 표현력을 제공하지만 그 복잡성으로 인해 모델링하기가 어려운 단점이 있다. 본 논문에서는 관계형 데이터베이스 설계의 기본적인 도구인 개체-관계 모델을 이용하여 XML Schema를 간단하게 생성하는 방법을 제시한다. 개체-관계 모델과 변환될 XML Schema의 구조는 서로 일대일로 매핑되지 않아 직접 변환할 수는 없다. 그래서 몇 가지 알고리즘을 이용하여 개체-관계 모델을 계층적 구조모델로 변환을 한다. 이렇게 변환된 계층적 구조 모델을 이용하여 최종적으로 XML Schema를 생성한다. 기존의 XML Schema 생성 방법은 개체 간의 속성이 상위 혹은 하위로 이동하면서 최초 설계시의 개체가 사라지므로 XML Schema의 중요한 특성인 재사용성을 이용할 수 없다는 단점을 가진다. 석기서 제시한 알고리즘은 XML Schema의 중요한 특성들인 재사용성, 전역 및 지역 기능 등을 가진 문서를 생성한다는 것이다. The XML is emerging as standard language for data exchange on the Web. Therefore a demand of XML Schema(W3C MLL Schema Spec.) that verifies XML document becomes increasing. However, XML Schema has a weak point for design because of its complication despiteof various data and abundant expressiveness. This paper shows a simple way of design for XML Schema using a fundamental means for database design, the Entity-Relationship model. The conversion from the Entity-Relationship model to XML Schema can not be directly on account of discordance between the two models. So we present some algorithms to generate XML Schema from the Entity-Relationship model. The algorithms produce XML Schema codes using a hierarchical view representation. An important objective of this automatic generation is to preserve XML Schema's characteristics such as reusability, global and local ability, ability of expansion and various type changes.

Matching large XML schemas

Current schema matching approaches still have to improve for very large and complex schemas. Such schemas are increasingly written in the standard language W3C XML schema, especially in E-business applications. The high expressive power and versatility of this schema language, in particular its type system and support for distributed schemas and name-spaces, introduce new issues. In this paper, we study some of the important problems in matching such large XML schemas. We propose a fragment-oriented match approach to decompose a large match problem into several smaller ones and to reuse previous match results at the level of schema fragments.

개체-관계 모델에선 XML Schema의 생성

본 XML이 웹 상에서 문서 교환의 표준으로 자리잡고 있으며 그 수요가 나날이 증가하고 있다. 그에 따라 XML 데이터나 문서 구조를 모델링하는 XML Schema(W3C XML Schema Spec) 또한 수요가 증가하고 있다. 그러나 XML Schema는 다양한 자료형과 풍부한 표현력을 제공하지만 그 복잡성으로 인해 모델링하기가 어려운 단점이 있다. 본 논문에서는 관계형 데이터베이스 설계의 기본적인 도구인 개체-관계 모델을 이용하여 XML Schema를 간단하게 생성하는 방법을 제시한다. 개체-관계 모델과 변환될 XML Schema의 구조는 서로 일대일로 매핑되지 않아 직접 변환할 수는 없다. 그래서 몇 가지 알고리즘을 이용하여 개체-관계 모델을 계층적 구조모델로 변환을 한다. 이렇게 변환된 계층적 구조 모델을 이용하여 최종적으로 XML Schema를 생성한다. 기존의 XML Schema 생성 방법은 개체간의 애트리뷰트가 상위 혹은 하위로 이동하면서 최초 설계시의 개체가 사라지므로 XML Schema의 중요한 특성인 재사용을 이용할 수 없다는 단점을 가진다. 여기서 제시한 알고리즘은 XML Schema의 중요한 특성들인 재사용성, 전역 및 로컬 기능 등을 가진 문서를 생성한다는 것이다. The XML is emerging as standard language for data exchange on the Web. Therefore the demand of XML Schema(W3C XML Schema Spec.) that verifies XML document becomes increasing. However, XML Schema has a weak point for design because of its complication despite of various data and abundant expressiveness. This paper shows a simple way of design for XML Schema using a fundamental means for database design, the Entity-Relationship model. The conversion from the Entity-Relationship model to XML Schema can not be directly on account of discordance between the two models. So we present some algorithms to generate XML Schema from the Entity-Relationship model. The algorithms produce XML Schema codes using a hierarchical view representation. An important objective of this automatic generation is to preserve XML Schema's characteristics such as reusability, global and local ability, ability of expansion and various type changes.

A Modeling of XML Document Preserving Object-Oriented Concepts

XML is the new universal format for structured documents and data on the World Wide Web. As the Web becomes a major means of disseminating and sharing information and as the amount of XML data increases substantially, there are increased needs to manage and design such XML document in a novel yet efficient way. Moreover a demand of XML Schema(W3C XML Schema Spec.) that verifies XML document becomes increasing recently. However, XML Schema has a weak point for design because of its complication despite of various data and abundant expressiveness. Thus, it is difficult to design a complex document reflecting the usability, global and local facility and ability of expansion. This paper shows a simple way of modeling for XML document using a fundamental means for database design, the Entity-Relationship model. The design from the Entity-Relationship model to XML Schema can not be directly on account of discordance between the two models. So we present some algorithms to generate XML Schema from the Entity-Relationship model. The algorithms produce XML Schema codes using a hierarchical view representation. An important objective of this modeling is to preserve XML Schema's object-oriented concepts such as reusability, global and local ability. In addition to, implementation procedure and evaluation of the proposed design method are described.

관계형 데이터베이스 기반의 XML 응용을 위한, UML 클래스를 이용한 통합 설계 방법론

B2B 전자상거래와 같이 XML을 이용한 정보 교환이 확산되고 있으며 이에 따라 상호 교환되는 정보에 대하여 체계적이며 안정적인 저장관리가 요구되고 있다. 이를 위해 XML 응용과 데이터베이스 연계를 위한 다양한 연구가 관계형 데이터베이스를 중심으로 수행되었다. 그러나 계층구조를 갖는 XML 데이터를 2차원 테이블의 집합인 관계형 정보로 표현하는 관계형 데이터베이스로의 저장에는 본질적인 한계가 있어, 계층적 구조를 2차원 정보로 변환하는 방법에 의해서 각 구조화된 정보를 관계형 데이터베이스로 저장하기 위한 모델링 방안이 요구된다. 양질의 어플리케이션 시스템을 구축하기 위해서는 우선적으로 모델링이 중요하다. 1997년에 OMG는 표준 모델링 언어로 UML를 채택하였고, 이에 따라 UML은 보다 널리 사용될 것이다. 그러므로 효율적인 XML 어플리케이션을 개발하는데 UML에 기반을 둔 설계 방법론이 필요하다고 할 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 UML을 이용한, 관계형 데이터베이스기반의 XML 응용을 위한 통합 설계 방법론을 제안한다. 이를 위하여 먼저 UML을 이용하여 W3C XML schema를 설계하기 위한 XML 모델링 방안을 제시하고, 아울러 교환되는 XML 데이터를 효율적으로 저장하기 위하여 관계형 데이터베이스 스키마 설계를 위한 데이터 모델링 방법을 제안한다. Nowadays the information exchange based on XML such as B2B electronic commerce is spreading. Therefore a systematic and stable management mechanism for storing the exchanged information is needed. For this goal there are many research activities for concerning the connection between XML application and relational databases. But because XML data has hierarchical structure and relational databases can store only flat-structured data, we need to make a conversion rule which changes the hierarchical architecture to a 2-dimensional format. Accordingly the modeling methodology for storing such structured information in relational databases is needed. In order to build good quality application systems, modeling is an important first step. In 1997, the OMG adopted the UML as its standard modeling language. Since industry has warmly embraced UML, its popularity should become more important in the future. So a design methodology based on UML is needed to develop efficient XML applications. In this paper, we propose a unified design methodology for XML applications based on relational database using UML. To reach these goals, first we introduce a XML modeling methodology to design W3C XML schema using UML and second we propose data modeling methodology for relational database schema to store XML data efficiently in relational databases.

MSL: a model for W3C XML Schema

Model Schema Language (MSL) is an attempt to formalize some of the core ideas in XML Schema. The benefits of a formal description are that it is both concise and precise. MSL has already proved helpful in work on the design of XML Query. We expect that similar techniques can be used to extend MSL to include most or all XML Schema.

An overview of the MPEG-7 description definition language (DDL)

This paper presents an overview of the MPEG-7 description definition language (DDL). The DDL provides the syntactic rules for creating, combining, extending and refining MPEG-7 descriptors (Ds) and description schemes (DSs). In the interests of interoperability, the W3C's XML Schema language, with the addition of certain MPEG-7-specific extensions, has been chosen as the DDL. This paper describes the background to this decision and using examples, provides an overview of the core XML Schema features used within MPEG-7 and the extensions made in order to satisfy the MPEG-7 DDL requirements.