Abstract not found

this paper, we extend XML DTDs with several classes of integrity constraints and investigate the complexity of reasoning about these constraints. The constraints range over keys, foreign keys, inverse constraints as well as ID constraints for capturing the semantics of object identities. They improve semantic specifications and provide a better reference mechanism for native XML applications. They are also useful in information exchange and data integration for preserving the semantics of data originating in relational and object-oriented databases. We establish complexity and axiomatization results for the (finite) implication problems associated with these constraints. In addition, we study implication of more general constraints, such as functional, inclusion and inverse constraints defined in terms of navigation paths

This paper is about the W3C standard node-addressing language for XML documents, called XPath. XPath is still under development. Version 2.0 appeared in 2001 while the theoretical foundations of Version 1.0 (dating from 1998) are still being widely studied. The paper aims at bringing XPath to a "stable fixed point" in its development: a version which is expressively complete, still manageable computationally, with a user-friendly syntax and a natural semantics.

XML specifications often consist of a type definition (typically, a DTD) and a set of integrity constraints. It has been shown previously that such specifications can be inconsistent, and thus it is often desirable to check consistency at compile-time. It is known that for general keys and foreign keys, and DTDs, the consistency problem is undecidable; however, it becomes NP-complete when all keys are one-attribute (unary), and tractable, if no foreign keys are used.

Reasoning on queries is a basic problem both in knowledge representation and databases. A fundamental form of reasoning on queries is checking containment, i.e., verifying whether one query yields necessarily a subset of the result of another query. Query containment is crucial in several contexts, such as query optimization, knowledge base verification, information integration, database integrity checking, and cooperative answering. In this paper we address the problem of query containment in the context of semistructured knowledge bases, where the basic querying mechanism, namely regular path queries,

Abstract. XPath 1.0 is a variable free language designed to specify paths between nodes in XML documents. Such paths can alternatively be specified in first-order logic. The logical abstraction of XPath 1.0, usually called Navigational or Core XPath, is not powerful enough to express every first-order definable path. In this paper we show that there exists a natural expansion of Core XPath in which every first-order definable path in XML document trees is expressible. This expansion is called Conditional XPath. It contains additional axis relations of the form (child::n[F])+, denoting the transitive closure of the path expressed by child::n[F]. The difference with XPath’s descendant::n[F] is that the path (child::n[F])+ is conditional on the fact that all nodes in between should be labeled by n and should make the predicate F true. This result can be viewed as the XPath analogue of the expressive completeness of the relational algebra with respect to first-order logic. 1

Abstract. One of the most important reasoning tasks on queries is checking containment, i.e., verifying whether one query yields necessarily a subset of the result of another one. Query containment, is crucial in several contexts, such as query optimization, query reformulation, knowledge-base verification, information integration, integrity checking, and cooperative answering. Containment is undecidable in general for Datalog, the fundamental language for expressing recursive queries. On the other hand, it is known that containment between monadic Datalog queries and between Datalog queries and unions of conjunctive queries are decidable. It is also known that containment between unions of conjunctive two-way regular path queries (UC2RPQs), which are queries used in the context of semistructured data models containing a limited form of recursion in the form of transitive closure, is decidable. In this paper we combine the automata-theoretic techniques at the base of these two decidability results to show that containment of Datalog in UC2RPQs is decidable in 2EXPTIME. 1

Abstract. XML data is often used (validated, stored, queried, etc) with respect to di erent types. Understanding the relationship between these types can provide important information for manipulating this data. We propose a notion of subsumption for XML to capture such relationships. Subsumption relies on a syntactic mapping between types, and can be used for facilitating validation and query processing. We study the properties of subsumption, in particular the notion of the greatest lower bound of two schemas, and show how this can be used as a guide for selecting a storage structure. While less powerful than inclusion, subsumption generalizes several other mechanisms for reusing types, notably extension and re nement from XML Schema, and subtyping. 1

Abstract. We define a boolean complete description logic dialect called DLFDreg that can be used to reason about structural equality in semistructured ordered data in the presence of document type definitions. This application depends on the novel ability of DLFDreg to express functional dependencies over sets of possibly infinite feature paths defined by regular languages. We also present a decision procedure for the associated logical implication problem. The procedure underlies a mapping of such problems to satisfiability problems of Datalog ∨,¬ nS and in turn to the Ackermann case of the decision problem. 1

Query containment is the problem of checking whether for all databases the answer to a query is a subset of the answer to a second query. In several data management tasks, such as data integration, mobile computing, etc., the data of interest are only accessible through a given set of views. In this case, containment of queries should be determined relative to the set of views, as already noted in the literature. Such a form of containment, which we call view-based query containment, is the subject of this paper. The problem comes in various forms, depending on whether each of the two queries is expressed over the base alphabet or the alphabet of the view names. We present a thorough analysis of view-based query containment, by discussing all possible combinations from a semantic point of view, and by showing their mutual relationships. In particular, for the two settings of conjunctive queries and two-way regular path queries, we provide both techniques and complexity bounds for the different variants of the problem. Finally, we study the relationship between view-based query containment and view-based query rewriting.