Abstract
Most query and transformation languages developed since the mid 90es for XML and semistructured data—e.g. XQuery [1], the precursors of XQuery [2], and XSLT [3]—build upon a path-oriented node selection: A node in a data item is specified in terms of a root-to-node path in the manner of the file selection languages of operating systems. Constructs inspired from the regular expression constructs , +, ?, and “wildcards” give rise to a flexible node retrieval from incompletely specified data items.
This paper further introduces into Xcerpt, a query and transformation language further developing an alternative approach to querying XML and semistructured data first introduced with the language UnQL [4]. A metaphor for this approach views queries as patterns, answers as data items matching the queries. Formally, an answer to a query is defined as a simulation [5] of an instance of the query in a data item.
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References
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Bry, F., Schaffert, S. (2003). The XML Query Language Xcerpt: Design Principles, Examples, and Semantics. In: Chaudhri, A.B., Jeckle, M., Rahm, E., Unland, R. (eds) Web, Web-Services, and Database Systems. NODe 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2593. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36560-5_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36560-5_22
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