Abstract:
The exponential growth and the nature of Internet and web-based
applications made eXtensible Markup Language (XML) as the de-facto
standard for data exchange and data dissemination. Now it is gaining
momentum in replacing conventional data models for data representation. XML
with its self-describing hierarchical structure and its associated XML Schema
(XSD), provide the flexibility and manipulative power needed to accommodate
distributive, heterogeneous data. But due to XML’s non-scalar, set-based semistructured
nature and ambiguity, traditional data design models lack the
capability to conceptually model, design and successfully implement a data
model. Due to this, organising and extracting information of XML documents
with their conceptual and operational semantics intact is still a challenging task.
In this paper, we propose a generic, language independent conceptual view
mechanism for XML documents (XML View) to enhance conceptual modelling
and designing capabilities of XML based information systems. We focus view
definition at the conceptual level and the semantics required in accommodating
such view mechanism at this higher level of abstraction.
