METAXPath

Authors

  • Curtis E. Dyreson School of EE and CS, Washington State University, USA
  • Michael H. Bohlen Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Denmark
  • Christian S. Jensen Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Denmark

Abstract

This paper presents the METAXPath data model and query language. METAXPath extends XPath with support for XML metadata. XPath is a specification language for locations in an XML document. It serves as the basis for XML query languages like XSLT and the XML Query Algebra. The METAXPath data model is a nested XPath tree. Each level of metadata induces a new level of nesting. The data model separates metadata and data into different dataspaces, supports meta-metadata, and enables sharing of metadata common to a group of nodes without duplication. The METAXPath query language has a level shift operator to shift a query from a data level to a metadata level. METAXPath maximally reuses XPath hence the changes needed to support metadata are few. METAXPath is fully compatible with XPath.

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Published

2006-02-01