XML storage and processing on mobile devices

Abstract

As XML database sizes grow, the amount of space used for storing the data and auxiliary data structures becomes a major factor in query and update performance. This is especially critical for devices with limited resources such as handheld computers, mobile phones or sensor networks. This presentation describes the requirements for efficiently storing and processing XML data on mobile devices. In particular, it summarizes our previous work on a compact XML storage scheme that supports all XPath navigational operations in near constant time. In addition to supporting efficient queries, the space requirement of the proposed scheme is within a constant factor of the information theoretic minimum, while insertions and deletions can be performed in near constant time as well. As a result, the proposed structure features a small memory footprint that increases cache locality, whilst still supporting standard APIs, such as DOM, and necessary database operations, such as queries and updates, efficiently. Finally, some applications using the proposed storage scheme are presented. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.