An architectural framework for native XML data management

Abstract

With rapid increase of semistructured data over the Web, XML becomes popular to represent such data and emerges as a de facto standard for information exchange among e-business applications. Since XML data are widely distributed, new native XML database systems, which are specifically tailored for managing such data, become necessary. Unlike data in conventional databases, XML has special characteristics and constraints, thus, well-defined architectural framework for conventional databases are not completely relevant to be adopted in native databases. Current state-of-the-art native databases employed their own architectures in their database designs, as a result, they are inconsistent and there is still lack of a common architectural framework that can be referenced by future XML database designers. We aim to fulfill this requirement. In this paper, we propose a general and an extended architectural frame-works that are derived from our practical experience on designing an efficient storage for XML data while preserving desirable features and possible constraints. The validation demonstrates that the proposed framework covers the architectures employed in current state-of-the-art native database systems.