| As XML becomes the standard for data exchange across the World Wide Web, the need for efficient storage of XML documents increases. Native XML storage solutions exist but are immature and raises compatibility issues with existing database systems. The goal of this thesis is to explore XML data management techniques that leverage the maturity of the most widely adopted database systems: relational databases. The technique developed is a hybrid of previous attempts at using the relational model to store XML data. In particular, both the structure and the model of XML documents are explicitly captured in relations in a relational database. A unique aspect of the approach is the clean separation of relations that represent metadata, and those that represent data. A system that embodies this approach, MetaXDB, is presented. It is shown that MetaXDB improves on prior work in the area by facilitating a lossless representation of XML data that can be efficiently queried. |
