Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML

The Web is causing a revolution in how we represent, retrieve, and process information. Its growth has given us a universally accessible databasea but in the form of a largely unorganized collection of documents. This is changing, thanks to the simultaneous emergence of new ways of representing data, from within the Web community, XML and from within the database community, semistructured data. The convergence of these two approaches has rendered them nearly identical. Now, there is a concerted effort to develop effective techniques for retrieving and processing both kinds of data. Data on the Web is the only comprehensive, up to date examination of these rapidly evolving retrieval and processing strategies, which are of critical importance for almost all Web and data intensive enterprises. This book offers detailed solutions to a wide range of practical problems while equipping you with a keen understanding of the fundamental issuesa including data models, query languages, and schemasa involved in their design, implementation, and optimization. You'll find it to be compelling reading, whether your interest is that of a practitioner involved in a database driven Web enterprise or a researcher in computer science or related field.

Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML is an examination of XML as a universal data transfer language and the theory behind the merging of the document-centric Web with a data-driven infrastructure. The book is intended as a textbook analysis of the issues, as well as background material for tool developers and others interested in the serious architectural details.

Aimed at readers already familiar with database concepts, the book includes little introductory material. It quickly lays out the concepts of self-describing semi-structured data and how XML fits into this approach to data representation. The discussion deals with XML as a data transfer mechanism and not a presentation language. While there is a quick explanation of DTDs, Xlink, and XPointer, readers should be fairly familiar with XML before approaching this advanced title.

The meat of the book revolves around query languages for XML. The authors present XML-QL and XSL in depth as examples. Then they move into much more advanced concepts such as schema formalisms, path constraints, and storage architectures. The book wraps up with a look at Lore and Strudel--two real-world systems that work with semi-structured data. Because of its intensive study of database and query theory, this textbook isn't for the ordinary Web developer. If data architectures are your expertise, however, Data on the Web may open new design doors. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: Object database models, basic XML syntax, UnQL, XML-QL, XSL, StruQL, schema formalisms, extracting schemas from queries, semistructured data servers, Lore, Strudel, and XML-based database products.