XML is an emerging standard format for data on the Web as well as in business applications. In order to store and access this information in an efficient manner, database technology must be utilized. A relational database system, the most established and mature technology for query processing and storage, creates a strong foundation for such an XML data management system. However, while relational databases are based on SQL queries, the original user queries are written in XQuery, an XML query language. This XML query language has support for order-sensitive queries as XML is an order-sensitive markup language. A major problem has been discovered with loading XML in a relational database. That problem is the lack of native SQL support for and management of order handling. While XQuery has order and positional support, SQL does not have the same support. For example, individuals who were viewing XML information about music albums would have a hard time querying for the first three songs of a track list from a relational backend. Mapping XML documents to relational backends also proves hard as the data models (hierarchical elements versus flat tables) are so different. For these reasons, and other purposes, the Rainbow System is being developed at WPI as a system that bridges XML data and relational data. This thesis in particular deals with the algebra operators that affect order, order sensitive loading and mapping of XML documents, and the pushdown of order handling into SQL-capable query engines. The contributions of the thesis are the order-sensitive rewrite rules, new XML to relational mappings with different order styles, order-sensitive template-driven SQL generation, and a proposed metadata table for order-sensitive information. A system that implements these proposed techniques with XQuery as the XML query language and Oracle as the backend relational storage system has been developed. Experiments were created to measure execution time based on various factors. First, scalability of the system as backend data set size grows is studied. Second, scalability of the system as results returned from the database grows, and finally, query execution times with different loading types are explored. The experimental results are encouraging. Query execution with the relational backend proves to be much faster than native execution within the Rainbow system. These results confirm the practical utility of our proposed order-sensitive XQuery execution solution over relational data.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:wpi.edu/oai:digitalcommons.wpi.edu:etd-theses-1754 |
| Date | 05 May 2003 |
| Creators | Murphy, Brian R |
| Contributors | Micha Hofri, Department Head, Elke A. Rundensteiner, Advisor, Lee A. Becker, Reader |
| Publisher | Digital WPI |
| Source Sets | Worcester Polytechnic Institute |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Masters Theses (All Theses, All Years) |
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