Using a Relational Database Management System to Implement XML-QL
Steven M. Beitzel, Eric C. Jensen, David A. Grossman, Frederick J. Ingham, Tim Lewis · 2001
We present an innovative method for implementing XML-QL using a relational database back-end and ad hoc query translation to SQL. Our system guarantees support for XML documents of any schema, or any combination of schemas. Furthermore, we ensure that any changes to the schema of XML source documents will not require a change to the underlying schema of the relational database. We have developed a prototype system which accepts XML-QL queries and translates them to a set of equivalent SQL queries. These queries are then posed to the relational back-end, and results are obtained. We will discuss the architecture and implementation details of our prototype, and give a detailed description of the algorithms used in query translation.