We propose regular expression types as a foundation for statically typed XML processing languages. Regular expression types, like most schema languages for XML, introduce regular expression notations such as repetition (*), alternation (|), etc., to describe XML documents. The novelty of our type system is a semantic presentation of subtyping, as inclusion between the sets of documents denoted by two types. We give several examples illustrating the usefulness of this form of subtyping in XML processing. The decision problem for the subtype relation reduces to the inclusion problem between tree automata, which is known to be exptime-complete. To avoid this high complexity in typical cases, we develop a practical algorithm that, unlike classical algorithms based on determinization of tree automata, checks the inclusion relation by a top-down traversal of the original type expressions. The main advantage of this algorithm is that it can exploit the property that type expressions being compared often share portions of their representations. Our algorithm is a variant of Aiken and Murphy’s set-inclusion constraint solver, to which are added several new implementation techniques, correctness proofs, and preliminary performance measurements on some small programs in the domain of typed XML processing.

this paper we describe a statically typed XML processing language called XDuce (o#cially pronounced "transduce"). XDuce is a functional language whose primitive data structures represent XML documents and whose types---called regular expression types---correspond to document schemas. The motivating principle behind its design is that a simple, clean, and powerful type system for XML processing can be based directly on the theory of regular tree automata

this paper, we present a preliminary design for a statically typed programming language, XDuce (pronounced "transduce "). XDuce is a tree transformation language, similar in spirit to mainstream functional languages but specialized to the domain of XML processing. Its novel features are regular expression types and a corresponding mechanism for regular expression pattern matching. Regular expression types are a natural generalization of DTDs, describing, as DTDs do, structures in XML documents using regular expression operators (i.e., *, ?, ---, etc.). Moreover, regular expression types support a simple but powerful notion of subtyping, yielding a substantial degree of flexibility in programming. Regular expression pattern matching is similar to ML pattern matching except that regular expression types can be embedded in patterns, which allows even more flexible matching.

We propose regular expression pattern matching as a core feature of programming languages for manipulating XML. We extend conventional pattern-matching facilities (as in ML) with regular expression operators such as repetition (*), alternation (|), etc., that can match arbitrarily long sequences of subtrees, allowing a compact pattern to extract data from the middle of a complex sequence. We then show how to check standard notions of exhaustiveness and redundancy for these patterns. Regular expression patterns are intended to be used in languages with type systems based on regular expression types. To avoid excessive type annotations, we develop a type inference scheme that propagates type constraints to pattern variables from the type of input values. The type inference algorithm translates types and patterns into regular tree automata, and then works in terms of standard closure operations (union, intersection, and difference) on tree automata. The main technical challenge is dealing with the interaction of repetition and alternation patterns with the first-match policy, which gives rise to subtleties concerning both the termination and precision of the analysis. We address these issues by introducing a data structure representing these closure operations

The emerging paradigm of electronic services promises to bring to distributed computation and services the flexibility that the web has brought to the sharing of documents. An understanding of fundamental properties of e-service composition is required in order to take full advantage of the paradigm. This paper examines proposals and standards for e-services from the perspectives of XML, data management, workflow, and process models. Key areas for study are identified, including behavioral service signatures, verification and synthesis techniques for composite services, analysis of service data manipulation commands, and XML analysis applied to service specifications. We give a sample of the relevant results and techniques in each of these areas.

. Set constraints are a natural formalism for many problems that arise in program analysis. This paper provides a brief introduction to set constraints: what set constraints are, why they are interesting, the current state of the art, open problems, applications and implementations. 1 Introduction Set constraints are a natural formalism for describing relationships between sets of terms of a free algebra. A set constraint has the form X ` Y , where X and Y are set expressions. Examples of set expressions are 0 (the empty set), ff (a set-valued variable), c(X; Y ) (a constructor application), and the union, intersection, or complement of set expressions. Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in program analysis algorithms based on solving systems of set constraints, including analyses for functional languages [AWL94, Hei94, AW93, AM91, JM79, MR85, Rey69], logic programming languages [AL94, HJ92, HJ90b, Mis84], and imperative languages [HJ91]. In these algorithms, sets of...

The containment and equivalence problems for various fragments of XPath have been studied by a number of authors. For some fragments, deciding containment (and even minimisation) has been shown to be in ptime, while for minor extensions containment has been shown to be conp-complete. When containment is with respect to trees satisfying a set of constraints (such as a schema or DTD), the problem seems to be more difficult. For example, containment under DTDs is conp- complete for an XPath fragment denoted XP for which containment is in ptime. It is also undecidable for a larger class of XPath queries when the constraints are so-called simple XPath integrity constraints (SXICs).

Data exchange is the problem of finding an instance of a target schema, given an instance of a source schema and a specification of the relationship between the source and the target. Theoretical foundations of data exchange have recently been investigated for relational data. In this paper, we start looking into the basic properties of XML data exchange, that is, restructuring of XML documents that conform to a source DTD under a target DTD, and answering queries written over the target schema. We define XML data exchange settings in which source-totarget dependencies refer to the hierarchical structure of the data. Combining DTDs and dependencies makes some XML data exchange settings inconsistent. We investigate the consistency problem and determine its exact complexity. We then move to query answering, and prove a dichotomy theorem that classifies data exchange settings into those over which query answering is tractable, and those over which it is coNP-complete, depending on classes of regular expressions used in DTDs. Furthermore, for all tractable cases we give polynomial-time algorithms that compute target XML documents over which queries can be answered. 1.

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Regular tree expressions are a natural formalism for describing the sets of tree-structured values that commonly arise in programs; thus, they are well-suited to applications in program analysis. We describe an implementation of regular tree expressions and our experience with that implementation in the context of the FL type system. A combination of algorithms, optimizations, and fast heuristics for computationally difficult problems yields an implementation efficient enough for practical use. 1 Introduction Regular tree expressions are a natural formalism for describing the sets of tree-structured values that commonly arise in programs. As such, several researchers have proposed using (variations on) regular tree expressions in type inference and program analysis algorithms [JM79, Mis84, MR85, HJ90, HJ91, AM91]. We are not aware of any implementations based on regular tree expressions, however, except for our own work on type analysis for the functional language FL [B + 89]. A p...