In the past decade XML became a wide-spread information exchange data model. Many XML users have many XML formats described by XML schemas. To ease the management of multiple XML schemas modeling similar reality, the conceptual model for XML was defined. With its definition came various challenges that needed to be further researched. This thesis focuses on two of those challenges. The first challenge is to manage the evolution of the multi-level conceptual model as the modeled reality, XML schemas and applications evolve in time. The second challenge is to allow the majority of users who already use XML schemas in their system without the conceptual model to use their schemas to semi-automatically create one. In addition a step towards integration of the conceptual modeling of XML and semantic web techniques was taken.

What do you do if a computational object fails a specification? An obvious approach is to repair it, namely, to modify the object minimally to get something that satisfies the constraints. In this thesis we study foundational problems of repairing regular specifications over strings and trees. Given two regular specifications R and T we aim to understand how difficult it is to transform an object satisfying R into an object satisfying T. The setting is motivated by considering R to be a restriction -- a constraint that the input object is guaranteed to satisfy -- while T is a target -- a constraint that we want to enforce. We first study which pairs of restriction and target specifications can be repaired with a ``small'' numbers of changes. We formalize this as the bounded repair problem -- to determine whether one can repair each object satisfying R into T with a uniform number of edits. We provide effective characterizations of the bounded repair problem for regular specifications over strings and trees. These characterizations are based on a good understanding of the cyclic behaviour of finite automata. By exploiting these characterizations, we give optimal algorithms to decide whether two specifications are bounded repairable or not. We also consider the impact of limitations on the editing process -- what happens when we require the repair to be done sequentially over serialized objects. We study the bounded repair problem over strings and trees restricted to this streaming setting and show that this variant can be characterized in terms of finite games. Furthermore, we use this characterization to decide whether one can repair a pair of specifications in a streaming fashion with bounded cost and how to obtain a streaming repair strategy in this case. The previous notion asks for a uniform bound on the number of edits, but having this property is a strong requirement. To overcome this limitation, we study how to calculate the maximum number of edits per character needed to repair any object in R into T. We formalize this as the asymptotic cost -- the limit of the number of edits divided by the length of the input in the worst case. Our contribution is an algorithm to compute the asymptotic cost for any pair of regular specifications over strings. We also consider the streaming variant of this cost and we show how to compute it by reducing this problem to mean-payoff games.

In the present work we explore application of XML schema mapping in conceptual modeling of XML schemas. We expand upon the previous efforts to map XML schemas to PIM schema via a decision tree. In this thesis more versatile method is implemented - the decision tree is trained from a large set of user- annotated mapping decision samples. Several variations of training that could improve the mapping results are proposed. The approach is evaluated in a wide range of experiments that show the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed variations of training. The work also contains a survey of different approaches to schema mapping and description of schema used in this work. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Due to the successful application in internet related fields, Extensible Markup Language (XML) and its related technologies are being explored as a revolutionary software file format technology used to provide increased interoperability in the discrete-event simulation (DES) arena. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed an XML-based information model (XSD) called the Shop Data Model (SDM), which is used to describe the contents of a neutral file format (NFF) that is being promoted as a means to make manufacturing simulation technology more accessible to a larger group of potential customers. Using a two step process, this thesis evaluates the NIST SDM information model in terms of its ability to encapsulate the informational requirements of one vendor's simulation model information conceptually and syntactically in order to determine its ability to serve as an NFF for the DES industry. ProModel Corporation, a leading software vendor in the DES industry since 1988, serves as the test case for this evaluation. The first step in this evaluation is to map the contents of ProModel's information model over to an XML schema file (XSD). Next, the contents of this new XSD file are categorized and compared to the SDM information model in order to evaluate compatibility. After performing this comparison, observations are made in relation to the challenges that simulation vendors might encounter when implementing the proposed NIST SDM. Two groups of limitations are encountered which cause the NIST SDM to support less than a third of the ProModel XSD elements. These two groups of limitations are: paradigm differences between the two information models and limitations posed due to the incomplete status of the NIST SDM specification. Despite these limitations, this thesis shows by comparison that XML technology does not pose any limitation which would invalidate its ability to syntactically represent a common information model or associated XML NFF. While only 28% of the ProModel element are currently supported by the SDM, appropriate changes to the SDM would allow the information model to serve as a foundation upon which a common information model and neutral file format for the DES industry could be built using XML technologies.

This master's thesis deals with problems of effective storage and querying of XML documents in A relational database. In the first part of this thesis XML and related technologies are described, with emphasis on languages for XML Schema definition and it's querying. Then an XML mapping method based on Hybrid method and XML Schema is described here. Hereafter the design and implementation of a native XML database front-end for object-relational database is described. Designed front-end allows storing and querying of XML documents into the underlying database. The last part contains results and evaluation of performance tests of the implemented system.

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Today's modern aerospace systems exhibit strong interdisciplinary coupling and require a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach. Analysis methods that were once considered feasible only for advanced and detailed design are now available and even practical at the conceptual design stage. This changing philosophy for conducting conceptual design poses additional challenges beyond those encountered in a low fidelity design of aircraft. This thesis takes some steps towards bridging the gaps in existing technologies and advancing the state-of-the-art in aircraft design. The first part of the thesis proposes a new Pareto front approximation method for multiobjective optimization problems. The method employs a hybrid optimization approach using two derivative free direct search techniques, and is intended for solving blackbox simulation based multiobjective optimization problems with possibly nonsmooth functions where the analytical form of the objectives is not known and/or the evaluation of the objective function(s) is very expensive (very common in multidisciplinary design optimization). A new adaptive weighting scheme is proposed to convert a multiobjective optimization problem to a single objective optimization problem. Results show that the method achieves an arbitrarily close approximation to the Pareto front with a good collection of well-distributed nondominated points. The second part deals with the interdisciplinary data communication issues involved in a collaborative mutidisciplinary aircraft design environment. Efficient transfer, sharing, and manipulation of design and analysis data in a collaborative environment demands a formal structured representation of data. XML, a W3C recommendation, is one such standard concomitant with a number of powerful capabilities that alleviate interoperability issues. A compact, generic, and comprehensive XML schema for an aircraft design markup language (ADML) is proposed here to provide a common language for data communication, and to improve efficiency and productivity within a multidisciplinary, collaborative environment. An important feature of the proposed schema is the very expressive and efficient low level schemata. As a proof of concept the schema is used to encode an entire Convair B58. As the complexity of models and number of disciplines increases, the reduction in effort to exchange data models and analysis results in ADML also increases. / Ph. D.

This thesis is focused on XML and related technologies. The XML language is directly linked to the databases and its support in databases. The overview of the XML support provided by various database products and systems are presented in this work. Support in the MS SQL Server 2008 is discussed in more detail starting with the mapping of relational data to XML and vice versa to support of the XML data type and work with it through XQuery. Also some indexing techniques are briefly presented. Finally, the support in MS SQL Server 2008 is demonstrated by means of a sample application, which verifes the theoretical knowledge in practice.

The aim of this thesis is to create a client xDB database, which supports visualization and management of XML documents and schemas. The first part deals with the introduction of XML, XML schemas (DTD, XML Schema, RelaxNG, etc.) and contextual technologies. After that the thesis deals with the problem of the XML persistence and it focuses on mapping techniques necessary for an efficient storage in a relational database. The main part is devoted to the design and implementation of client application XML Admin, which is programmed in Java. The application uses the XML:DB interface to communicate with the xDB database. It supports storing XML documents to a collection and the XPath language for querying them. The final section is devoted to application performance testing and comparison with existing native database eXist.

Present web is aiming to the possibility of automatization of user behavior on web applications. Adding of semantics and creation of web service interface are the main approaches for accomplishment of this user comfort. Nevertheless, this direction brings some problems which can make more difficult publishing and implementation of web documents. Web services can connect heterogeneous systems, because they are based on XML markup language that is a place where all applications can meet without lost of platform independence. The automatic transformation of a web application into a web service could be considerably more effective than to create a web service from the beginning. However, this step is for some applications almost unreal without knowledge of their inner structure. In most cases, the transformation will be done semiautomatically with help of human decisions.