3D_XML: A three-dimensional XML-based model

Abstract

Much research work has recently focused on the problem of representing historical information in XML. In this paper, we describe an ongoing work to represent XML changes. Our model is a three-dimensional XML-based model (3D_XML in short) for representing and querying histories of XML documents. The proposed model incorporates three time dimensions, valid time, transaction time, and efficacy time without extending the syntax of XML. We use XQuery to express complex temporal queries on the evolution of the document contents. We believe that native XML databases (NXDs) present a viable alternative to relational temporal databases when complex time dependent data has to be manipulated and stored. So NXDs will be our choice. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.