Handling XML and relational data sources with a uniform object-oriented query language

Abstract

Where data integration is considered, a natural choice is establishing a canonical data model which needs to fulfill two essential requirements. Firstly, it has to be suitable and expressive enough from the consuming applications point of view. Secondly, it should include constructs allowing for a possibly straightforward mapping of the data structures of the resources being integrated. The object data model based on classes seems to be an intuitive and sufficiently expressive choice for this role. However, the other data models used in the resources being integrated result in a mismatch that needs to be handled in order to avoid the productivity and maintainability penalty. This paper presents the data store model used by the SBQL query and programming language and discusses the already developed and future features of the language aimed at uniform handling of relational and XML data. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.