Integrity Constraints for XML and Beyond


NSF Org IIS
Award Number 0093168
Award Instr. CAREER. Continuing grant
Prgm Manager Maria Zemankova
IIS DIV OF INFORMATION & INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS
CSE DIRECT FOR COMPUTER & INFO SCIE & ENGINR
Start Date September 15, 2001
Expires September 15, 2006 (Estimated)
Expected Total Amt. $300,000 (Estimated)
Investigator Wenfei Fan     wenfei@research.bell-labs.com (Principal Investigator)
Sponsor
NSF Program 6855 INFORMATION & DATA MANAGEMENT
Field Application 0104000 Information Systems

Abstract

XML has become the prime standard for data exchange on the Web, and is increasingly used to represent data currently residing in databases. With this comes the need for a full treatment of integrity constraints for XML such as key, foreign key, functional, inclusion and inverse constraints, which are commonly found in databases to convey an essential part of the semantics of the data. The goal of this project is to develop XML specifications with constraints, to advance understanding of consistency and implication of XML constraints, and to explore applications of constraints in XML data transformations including information preservation, constraint propagation and normalization of XML specifications. In pursuit of this goal, methods for specifying and reasoning about XML constraints are being developed, and transformation techniques and tools in the XML context are being implemented and evaluated. An important application of these tools and techniques involves the use of constraints in the specification of biomedical data and the conversion of such data to XML. The educational goal aims at the development of a database curriculum at Temple University that integrates data management for semistructured data, XML and traditional databases in a uniform framework of semantic specifications. An important component of this curriculum involves the research and implementation opportunities provided by the project. Results from the project are expected to yield insight into integrity constraints for hierarchically structured data, including but not limited to XML. They will also provide methods, techniques and tools to facilitate semantic specification, data integration and query optimization.