Re: XQuery as a multidatabase language

Hi Andreas,

That's correct, and of course there have already been some academic and 
commercial projects to exploit this (using XQuery or its precursors).  You're 
probably already familiar with them.

The XQuery Data Model can accomodate multiple databases, but there is nothing 
in the standard that describes how that might be done (and that's a good 
thing).  XQuery knows nothing about domain semantics and does not try to 
resolve schema differences.

I think you would be interested in http://research.microsoft.com/db/ModelMgt/ 
especially the papers on Cupid and automatic schema matching (and other papers 
by Bernstein).


Cheers,

Michael Brundage
michael.brundage@comcast.net

writing as
Author, "XQuery: The XML Query Language" (Addison-Wesley, to appear 2003)
Co-author, "Professional XML Databases" (Wrox Press, 2000)
not as
Technical Lead
WebData XML Team / Common Query Runtime
Microsoft
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm currently working on my master’s thesis at the University Of Bergen, 
> Norway. In my thesis I (try to) explore the capabilities of XQuery in a 
> multidatabase context. This does not merely mean accessing data from 
> several XML documents, but also resolving the semantic heterogeneities 
> possibly (and most likely) occurring when attempting this.
> 
> I am interested in contact with anyone who's working on similar problems or 
> others who think they could have useful input in this area.
> 
> My current conclusion is that XQuery can access several XML-documents, but 
> does that it does not offers any means to resolve differences such as 
> differences such as homonyms and synonyms in the mark-up.
> 
> Regards
> Andreas Jacobsen
> University Of Bergen, Norway
>

Received on Friday, 12 September 2003 23:48:50 UTC