A Data Mediator for Storing and Querying XML Data in RDBMS using efficient schema-oblivious Mapping Strategies: Fid-Bau Portal

A Data Mediator for Storing and Querying XML Data in RDBMS using efficient schema-oblivious Mapping Strategies

Hyder, Syed / Hassan, Saeed

XML and Relational Data can not be kept separately because XML is becoming the universal standard data format for the representation and exchanging the information where as the most of the existing data lies in RDBMS and their power of data management capabilities can not be degraded. The existing database systems do not provide the uniform support for both XML and Relational Data with similar storage and retrieval efficiencies. In this paper a generic data mediator that provides the uniform support for both XML and relational data with similar storage and retrieval efficiencies is produced; by using existing efficient schema-oblivious mapping strategies Xnode and SUXCENT and free of cost available technologies: MySQL, PHPMyAdmin and PHP classes. This mediator can be used as an affordable and quick solution until the existing database systems provide an efficient solution for the problem. The key to mediator approach is storing and retrieving XML documents in a relational database, providing a user interface for XML manipulation, independent of proprietorship and without doing any modification in its basic structure. After the implementation of the mediator, the RDBMS becomes repository for both XML and Relational data simultaneously. The mediator has flexibility to add any proposed more efficient schema-oblivious XML mapping strategy as a new collection. The mediator can also be used as the benchmarking tool for the researchers to compare various schema-oblivious XML mapping strategies after adding them as a new collection.