Updatable XML views

Abstract

XML views can be used in Web applications to resolve incompatibilities among heterogeneous XML sources. They allow to reduce the amount of data that a user has to deal with and to customize an XML source. We consider virtual updatable views for a query language addressing an XML native database. The novelty of the presented mechanism is inclusion of information about intents of updates into view definitions. This information takes the form of procedures that overload generic view updating operations. The mechanism requires integration of queries with imperative (procedural) statements and with procedures. This integration is possible within the Stack-Based Approach to query languages, which is based on the classical concepts of programming languages such as the environment stack and the paradigm of naming/scoping/binding. In the paper, we present the view mechanism describing its syntax, semantics and discussing examples illustrating its possible applications. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.