XML design for relational storage

Design principles for XML schemas that eliminate redundancies and avoid update anomalies have been studied recently. Several normal forms, generalizing those for relational databases, have been proposed. All of them, however, are based on the assumption of a native XML storage, while in practice most of XML data is stored in relational databases. In this paper we study XML design and normalization for relational storage of XML documents. To be able to relate and compare XML and relational designs, we use an information-theoretic framework that measures information content in relations and documents, with higher values corresponding to lower levels of redundancy. We show that most common relational storage schemes preserve the notion of being well-designed (i.e., anomalies- and redundancyfree). Thus, existing XML normal forms guarantee welldesigned relational storages as well. We further show that if this perfect option is not achievable, then a slight restriction on XML constraints gu...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: WWW
• Authors: Solmaz Kolahi, Leonid Libkin
• Keywords: Edge-based Relational Representation, Internet Technology, Relational Databases, Relational Storage Schemes, WWW 2007