A Systematic Approach for Changing XML Namespaces in XML Schemas and Managing their Effects on Associated XML Documents under Schema Versioning

Abstract

Although a lot of research work has been done concerning schema changes that deal with basic components of XML Schemas, like element and attribute declarations, simple types, and complex type definitions, the current literature of the XML database field does not include any paper that studies changes of advanced concepts of XML Schemas, like XML namespaces, local (or global) qualified (or unqualified) declarations, and schema definition styles (e.g., Russian Doll, Garden of Eden). In this paper, we study how XML namespace evolution is handled in an XML environment that supports both schema and document versioning. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work on such a topic. Indeed, we propose a systematic approach that allows specifying changes on XML namespaces defined in XML Schemas, and propagating their effects to underlying XML documents, while maintaining all XML schema and XML instance versions.

Conversion of XML schema design styles with StyleVolution

“…In the future, we plan to develop a tool that demonstrates the usability of our proposal in a user-friendly integrated development framework. Moreover, since in our previous work (Brahmia et al , 2016a, 2016b), we have dealt with XML namespace changes in an environment that supports schema versioning, which is an aspect that has been ignored in this paper, although it is closely related to the issues studied in the current work (the proper use of namespaces also facilitates the modularity and the reuse and exchange of specifications; XML namespaces are involved when importing (through the <xsd:import>construct) or including (through the <xsd:import>construct) XML schemas), we also aim at investigating the combination of changes to XML namespaces with changes to XML schema design styles, in a multi-version XML context.…”

“…In the realm of information systems, XML has been largely adopted as a semi-structured data model and XML schema as a semi-structured data modeling formalism (Abiteboul et al , 2011; Aiken and Allen, 2004; Chaudhri et al , 2003). In this context, although a lot of research work has been done on XML schema evolution (Klettke, 2007; Guerrini and Mesiti, 2008; Cavalieri et al , 2011; Domínguez et al , 2011; Nečaský et al , 2012; Amavi et al , 2014; Klímek et al , 2015) and on XML schema versioning (Dyreson et al , 2006; Brahmia and Bouaziz, 2008; Snodgrass et al , 2008; Malý et al , 2011; Baqasah et al , 2014; Brahmia et al , 2014a, 2016b, 2018a), none of such approaches has dealt with changes involving XML schema design styles.…”

“…Brahmia et al (2016a, 2016b) have proposed an approach for managing changes to XML namespaces in XML schemas and their effects on underlying XML instances, in a setting that supports schema versioning, but they have not studied the support of XML schema design styles and of their evolution. In this paper, we complete the picture by dealing with such evolution and showing the use of our proposed translation procedures for changing design styles of XML schemas while schema versioning is being supported.…”

“…In the present work, we continue our research work on changes to the overall XML schema design patterns, which already covered changes to XML namespaces in (Brahmia et al , 2016a, 2016b). In particular, we focus here on changes involving XML schema design styles.…”