Constraints-Preserving Transformation from XML Document Type Definition to Relational Schema

As Extensible Markup Language (XML) [5] is emerging as the data format of the internet era, there are increasing needs to efficiently store and query XML data. One way towards this goal is using relational database by transforming XML data into relational format. In this paper, we argue that existing transformation algorithms are not complete in the sense that they focus only on structural aspects and ignoring semantic aspects. We present the semantic knowledge that needs to be captured during the transformation to ensure a correct relational schema. Further, we show a simple algorithm that can 1) derive such semantic knowledge from the given XML Document Type Definition (DTD) and 2) preserve the knowledge by representing them in terms of semantic constraints in relational database terms. By combining the existing transformation algorithms and our constraints-preserving algorithm, one can transform XML DTD to relational schema where correct semantics and behaviors are guaranteed by the preserved constraints. Experimental results are also presented.