MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science EECS Event

Bridging Relational Technology and XML

Jayavel (Jai) Shanmugasundaram
University of Wisconsin

Monday, March 19, 2001
4:15 PM (refreshments 4:00)
Room NE43-518
EECS Special Seminar

Abstract

XML has emerged as the standard data-exchange format for Internet-based business applications. These applications introduce a new set of data management requirements involving XML. However, in the foreseeable future, a significant amount of business data will continue to be stored in relational database systems. Thus, a bridge is needed to satisfy the requirements of these new XML-based applications while still leveraging relational database technology. This talk will describe the design and implementation of the XPERANTO middleware system, which we believe achieves this goal. In particular, XPERANTO provides a general and efficient means to (a) store and query XML documents using a relational database system and (b) publish existing relational data as XML documents. Some of the key architectural features of the XPERANTO system are that it provides users with a high-level, declarative, XML query interface, and that it executes XML queries efficiently by pushing most of the computation down to the underlying relational database system.