XML restructuring and integration for tabular data

Abstract

We study the data integration and restructuring issues of tabular data. We consider the case where the same set of data is collected from independent sites, stored in different DBMSs or other repositories, organized in different tabular or equivalent semi-structured formats, and published on the web. These sites transform tabular data into XML data with possible syntactic discrepancies in their original tabular structures. Data integration refers to the task of creating an integrated XML view with a pre-specified format by restructuring and integrating different XML documents. Existing XML query algebras are not sufficient for tabular conversions. We propose the XML-T model and the restructuring and integration operators for tabular data. We show with examples the uses of our operators to create "views". © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.