BInXS: A process for integration of XML schemata

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed integration process for XML schemata called BInXS. BInXS adopts a global-as-view integration approach that builds a global schema from a set of heterogeneous XML schemata related to a same application domain. This bottom-up approach maps all element and attribute definitions in XML schemata to correspondent concepts at the global schema, allowing access to all data available at the XML sources. The integration process is semi-automatically performed over conceptual representations of the XML schemata, which provides a better understanding of the semantics of the XML data to be unified. A conceptual schema is generated by a set of conversion rules that are applied to a schema definition for XML data. Once this conceptual schema is the result of a meticulous analysis of the XML logical model, it is able to abstract the particularities of semistructured and XML data, like elements with mixed contents and elements with alternative representations. Therefore, the further unification of such conceptual schemata implicitly deals with structural conflicts inherent to semistructured and XML data. In addition, BInXS supports a mapping strategy based on XPath expressions in order to maintain correspondences among global concepts and data at the XML sources. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.