A glance on current XML twig pattern matching algorithms

Abstract

Extensible Markup Language (XML) has become a de facto standard for information representation and exchange over the Internet. The core operation of XML Query Processing is twig pattern matching, that is, finding in an XML document tree D all matches of a given twig query Q. Modern twig query matching algorithms often first decompose individual path matches and then merge them to form twig matches. In this paper, we review and evaluate two current efficient algorithms, namely HolisticTwigStack and TwigList. The HolisticTwigStack algorithm, which based on TwigStack, a notable and effective algorithm, uses a stack structure to avoid the storage of intermediate matches and the process of merging matches, whereas the TwigList algorithm use simple lists. Our analysis on experimental results show that the advantages and disadvantages of both HolisticTwigStack and TwigList for efficient XML Twig Pattern Matching in term of processing time and memory usage. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.