Development life cycle and tools for XML content models

2003

The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) offers many important benefits and improvements over its predecessor, HTML. But, articles have appeared about XML with exaggerated claims of it being a "Rosetta Stone" with "miraculuous ways" to almost automatically provide information integration. These claims are actually being believed by some executives. It is almost surprising that no one has claimed that XML can cure cancer and provide world peace! In reality, XML must face many of the same challenges that plagued Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and database integration efforts of the past. To a large extent, there are both managerial and technical challenges -much related to the difficulties of attaining universally accepted semantically-rich standards. In this paper, these challenges will be discussed with specific emphasis on the issue of dealing with a real-world with multiple "contexts." Some promising research directions, some overlapping with the "semantic web" effort, will be presented.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2002

We define an object-oriented data model called XSDM (XML Schema Data Model) and present a graphical representation of XML Schema integration. The three layers included are, namely, pre-integration, comparison and integration. During pre-integration, the schema present in XML Schema notation is read and is converted into the XSDM notation. During the comparison phase of integration, correspondences as well as conflicts between elements are identified. During the integration phase, conflict resolution, restructuring and merging of the initial schemas take place to obtain the global schema.

"Semantic Hyper/Multi-media Adaptation: Schemes and Applications", Springer 2013

"In the context of the emergent Web of Data, a large number of organizations, institutes and companies (e.g., DBpedia, Geonames, PubMed ACM, IEEE, NASA, BBC) adopt the Linked Data practices and publish their data utilizing Semantic Web (SW) technologies. On the other hand, the dominant standard for information exchange in the Web today is XML. Many international standards (e.g., Dublin Core, MPEG-7, METS, TEI, IEEE LOM) have been expressed in XML Schema resulting to a large number of XML datasets. The SW and XML worlds and their developed infrastructures are based on different data models, semantics and query languages. Thus, it is crucial to provide interoperability and integration mechanisms to bridge the gap between the SW and XML worlds. In this chapter, we give an overview and a comparison of the technologies and the standards adopted by the XML and SW worlds. In addition, we outline the latest efforts from the W3C groups, including the latest working drafts and recommendations (e.g., OWL 2, SPARQL 1.1, XML Schema 1.1). Moreover, we present a survey of the research approaches which aim to provide interoperability and integration between the XML and SW worlds. Finally, we present the SPARQL2XQuery and XS2OWL Frameworks, which bridge the gap and create an interoperable environment between the two worlds. These Frameworks provide mechanisms for: (a) Query translation (SPARQL to XQuery translation); (b) Mapping specification and generation (Ontology to XML Schema mapping); and (c) Schema transformation (XML Schema to OWL transformation)."

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005

This paper presents a detailed integration process for XML schemata called BInXS. BInXS adopts a global-as-view integration approach that builds a global schema from a set of heterogeneous XML schemata related to a same application domain. This bottom-up approach maps all element and attribute definitions in XML schemata to correspondent concepts at the global schema, allowing access to all data available at the XML sources. The integration process is semiautomatically performed over conceptual representations of the XML schemata, which provides a better understanding of the semantics of the XML data to be unified. A conceptual schema is generated by a set of conversion rules that are applied to a schema definition for XML data. Once this conceptual schema is the result of a meticulous analysis of the XML logical model, it is able to abstract the particularities of semistructured and XML data, like elements with mixed contents and elements with alternative representations. Therefore, the further unification of such conceptual schemata implicitly deals with structural conflicts inherent to semistructured and XML data. In addition, BInXS supports a mapping strategy based on XPath expressions in order to maintain correspondences among global concepts and data at the XML sources. 5 Figure 2 (b) is a logical abstraction of a schema defined through a DTD (Document Type Definition) or an XSD (XML Schema Definition) [5]

2001

MSL (Model Schema Language) is an attempt to formalize some of the core idea in XML Schema. The benefits of a formal description is 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 of XML Schema.

Concurrent Engineering, 2008

In enterprise integration, a data-exchange specification is an architectural artifact that evolves along with the business. Maintaining a coherent, data-exchange, semantic model is an important, yet nontrivial task. A coherent, semantic model of data — exchange specifications supports reuse, promotes interoperability, and, consequently, reduces integration costs. Components of data-exchange specifications must be consistent and valid in terms of agreed upon standards and guidelines. In this article, we propose an activity model for the creation, test, and maintenance of a shared semantic model that is coherent and supports scalable standards-based enterprise integration. While it frames our research and the development of tools to support those activities for semantic models implemented using XML (Extensible Markup Language) Schema, the activity model presented in this article is independent of the data-exchange technology.

INCOSE International Symposium, 2001

To interoperate data sources that differ structurally and semantically particular problems occur, for example, problems of changing schema in data sources will affect the integrated schema. In this paper, conflict between heterogeneous systems is investigated and existing approaches to integration are reviewed. We propose XMInt, an XML Mediated Integration model which employs mediation and wrapping techniques as the main components for the integration of databases and legacy systems. With XMInt, a mediator acts as an intermediate medium transforming queries to subqueries, integrating result data and resolving conflicts. Wrappers then transform sub-queries to specific local queries so that each local system is able to understand the queries. This framework is currently being developed to make the integration process more widely accessible by using standard tools. An initial prototype is included to demonstrate the model.

2004

Abstract. The paper proposes a high-level approach for the e-enterprise modelling, able to respond to the new performance criteria, to the consideration of the whole life cycle of a product, process orientation, etc. The proposed model is based on GERAM methodology, UML modelling language and XML-based technologies. At the implementation level, we propose different solutions based on open standards and software applications. Keywords: e-enterprise, integration, XML, modelling.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2002

This paper describes the e-XML component suite, a modular product for integrating heterogeneous data sources under an XML schema and querying in real-time the integrated information using XQuery, the emerging W3C standard for XML query. We describe the two main components of the suite, i.e., the repository for warehousing XML and the mediator for distributed query processing. We also discuss some typical applications.

Journal of Digital Information Management, 2005

In this paper we present an ontology-based method for formalizing the implicit semantic and we suggest mechanisms to semantically integrate XML schemas and documents as well. After a survey of database interoperability, we present our semantic integration approach by explaining the nature of ontology. The article then presents our integration method for XML data and schemas using a generic ontology.