Specifying XML Data with Integrity Constraints.ppt

May 9, 2001 Tutorial Specifying XML Data with Integrity Constraints Wenfei Fan Bell Labs and Temple University Outline XML, Web data and database techniques XML specifications: types and constraints XML constraints: absolute/relative keys and foreign keys Analysis of XML constraints: consistency and implication Research issues Area references: A Web odyssey: From Codd to XML, V. Vianu, PODS 2001. /~wfan/PODS2001/proceedings.html Constraints for semistructured data and XML, P. Buneman, W. Fan, J. Simeon and S. Weinstein, SIGMOD Record 30(1), March 2001. /~fan/papers/xml/survey.ps.gz Part 1. XML: a brief introduction What is wrong with HTML? HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is good for presentation, but does not help information extraction by programs. h3 George Bush /h3 b Taking Eng 055 /b br em GPA: 1.5 /em br h3 Eng 055 /h3 b Spelling /b HTML tags: predefined and fixed describing display format rather than the structure of data eXtensible Markup Language XML tags: user-defined, arbitrarily nested describing the structure of the data rather than display student id = “123” name firstName George /firstName lastName Bush /lastName /name taking Eng 055 /taking GPA 1.5 /GPA /student course cno = “Eng 055” title Spelling /title /course XML basics Element: the segment between a start tag and a corresponding end tag, e.g., student, name. Subelement: relation between an element and its component elements, e.g., name to student. Attribute: marked text within a start tag, e.g., id. Text: the single basic type (PCDATA), e.g., “Bush”. XML elements are ordered, whereas attributes are not. student id = “123” name firstName George /firstName lastName Bush /lastName /name taking Eng 055 /taking GPA 1.5 /GPA /student The XML tree model An XML document is typically modeled as a node-labeled tree. Element node: internal, with a name (tag)