Pathfinder: XQuery Off the Relational Shelf

The Pathfinder project makes inventive use of relational database technology--originally developed to process data of strictly tabular shape--to construct efficient database-supported XML and XQuery processors. Pathfinder targets database engines that implement a set-oriented mode of query execution: many off-the-shelf traditional database systems make for suitable XQuery runtime environments, but a number of off-beat storage back-ends fit that bill as well. While Pathfinder has been developed with a close eye on the XQuery semantics, some of the techniques that we will review here will be generally useful to evaluate XQuery-style iterative languages on database back-ends. 1 The Rectangularization of XQuery: Purely Relational XML Processing If you zoom back in time to dig for the semantic roots of XQuery [5], you will find that the language's core construct, the for

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: DEBU
• Authors: Torsten Grust, Jan Rittinger, Jens Teubner
• Keywords: Comprehension Form, Database, DEBU 2008, XQuery