Analysis and Performance Studies. A Summary of Current Research

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed integration process for XML schematacalled BInXS. BInXS adopts a global-as-view integration approachthat builds a global schema from a set of heterogeneous XML schematarelated to a same application domain. This bottom-up approach mapsall element and attribute definitions in XML schemata to correspondentconcepts at the global schema, allowing access to all data availableat the XML sources. The integration process is semi-automaticallyperformed over conceptual representations of the XML schemata, whichprovides a better understanding of the semantics of the XML datato be unified. A conceptual schema is generated by a set of conversionrules that are applied to a schema definition for XML data. Oncethis conceptual schema is the result of a meticulous analysis ofthe XML logical model, it is able to abstract the particularitiesof semistructured and XML data, like elements with mixed contentsand elements with alternative representations. Therefore, the furtherunification of such conceptual schemata implicitly deals with structuralconflicts inherent to semistructured and XML data. In addition, BInXSsupports a mapping strategy based on XPath expressions in order tomaintain correspondences among global concepts and data at the XMLsources.