DeXIN: An extensible framework for distributed xquery over heterogeneous data sources

Abstract

In the Web environment, rich, diverse sources of heterogeneous and distributed data are ubiquitous. In fact, even the information characterizing a single entity - like, for example, the information related to a Web service - is normally scattered over various data sources using various languages such as XML, RDF, and OWL. Hence, there is a strong need for Web applications to handle queries over heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed data sources. However, existing techniques do not provide sufficient support for this task. In this paper we present DeXIN, an extensible framework for providing integrated access over heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed web data sources, which can be utilized for data integration in modern Web applications and Service Oriented Architecture. DeXIN extends the XQuery language by supporting SPARQL queries inside XQuery, thus facilitating the query of data modeled in XML, RDF, and OWL. DeXIN facilitates data integration in a distributed Web and Service Oriented environment by avoiding the transfer of large amounts of data to a central server for centralized data integration and exonerates the transformation of huge amount of data into a common format for integrated access. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.