X-Evolution: A System for XML Schema Evolution and Document Adaptation

Abstract

The structure of XML documents, expressed as XML schemas [6], can evolve as well as their content. Systems must be frequently adapted to real-world changes or updated to fix design errors and thus data structures must change accordingly in order to address the new requirements. A consequence of schema evolution is that documents instance of the original schema might not be valid anymore. Currently, users have to explicitly revalidate the documents and identify the parts to be updated. Moreover, once the parts that are not valid anymore have been identified, they have to be explicitly updated. All these activities are time consuming and error prone and automatic facilities are required.