Querying and Updating the File
Serge Abiteboul, Sophie Cluet, Tova Milo · 1993
We show how structured data stored in files can benefit from standard database technology and in particular be queried and updated using database languages. We introduce the notion of structuring schema which consists of a grammar annotated with database programs and of a database schema. We study the translation from structured strings to databases, and the converse. We adapt optimization techniques from relational databases to our context. 1 Introduction Database systems are concerned with structured data. Unfortunately, data is often stored in an unstructured manner (e.g., in files) even when it does have a strong internal structure (e.g., electronic documents or programs) . In this paper, we consider how data stored as strings can benefit from standard database technology and in particular be queried and updated using database languages. In actual systems, data is often stored as string for obvious historical reasons. The problem that we are considering is thus very general. Tools...