Querying and restructuring XML data by graphical query language

• Published in: International journal of Web information systems Vol. 6; no. 3; pp. 230 - 247
• Main Authors: Ykhlef, Mourad, Alqahtani, Sarra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bingley Emerald Group Publishing Limited 31.08.2010
• Subjects: Algorithmic languages; Digital libraries; Extensible Markup Language; Graphical user interfaces; Graphs; Programming languages; Relational data bases; Syntax; Variables
• ISSN: 1744-0084; 1744-0092
• DOI: 10.1108/17440081011070169

Purpose The rapid development of Extensible Markup Language XML from a mere data exchange format to a universal syntax for encoding domain specific information increases the need of new query languages specifically visualized to address the characteristics of XML. Such languages should be able not only to extract information from XML documents, but also to apply powerful restructuring operators, based on a welldefined semantics. Moreover, XML queries should be natural to write and understand, as also endusers are expected to access the large XML information bases supporting their businesses. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new graphical query language for XML GQLX for querying and restructuring XML data. Designmethodologyapproach The methodology emphasizes on GQLX's development, which is based on GXML data model syntax to express a wide variety of XML queries, ranging from simple selection to expressive data transformations involving grouping, aggregation and sorting. GQLX has an operational semantics based on the annotated XML, which serves to express queries and data trees in the form of XML. The paper also presents an algorithm to achieve the matching between data and query trees after translating them into annotated XML. Findings Developed and demonstrated were a GXML syntax annotated XML for the semantic operations and a matching algorithm. Research limitationsimplications The future research work on this language lies in expanding it to include recursion and nested queries. Practical implications The algorithmsapproaches proposed can be implemented to enhance the performance of the XML query language. Originalityvalue The proposed work integrates various novel techniques for XML query syntaxsemantic into a single language with a suitable matching algorithm.