Abstract
This paper surveys work of the authors on pattern languages for tree-structured data with XML as the main application in mind. The main focus is on formalisms from formal language theory and logic. In particular, it considers attribute grammars, query automata, tree-walking automata, extensions of first-order logic, and monadic second-order logic. It investigates expressiveness as well as the complexity of query evaluation and some optimization problems. Finally, formalisms that allow comparison of attribute values are considered.
Research Assistant of the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
H. Andréka, J. van Benthem, and I. Németi. Modal languages and bounded fragments of predicate logic. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 27:217–274, 1998.
G. J. Bex, S. Maneth, and F. Neven. A formal model for an expressive fragment of XSLT. 1st International Conference on Computational Logic, pages 1137–1151, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, volume 1861. Springer, 2000.
R. Bloem and J. Engelfriet. A comparison of tree transductions defined by monadic second order logic and by attribute grammars. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 61(1):1–50, 2000.
A. Brüggemann-Klein, M. Murata, and D. Wood. Regular Tree and Regular Hedge Languages over Unranked Alphabets: Version 1, April 3, 2001. Technical report, HKUST-TCSC-2001-05, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, 2001.
A. Brüggemann-Klein and D. Wood. Caterpillars: A Context Specification Technique. Markup Languages, 2(1):81–106, 2000.
D. Chamberlin, D. Florescu, J. Robie, J. Siméon, and M. Stefanescu. XQuery: a query language for XML. Latest version: http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/.
J. Clark. XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0. Latest version: http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt.
M. Consens and T. Milo. Algebras for querying text regions: Expressive power and optimization. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 3:272–288, 1998.
P. Deransart, M. Jourdan, and B. Lorho. Attribute Grammars: Definition, Systems and Bibliography, volume 323 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, 1988.
H.-D. Ebbinghaus and J. Flum. Finite Model Theory. Springer, 1995.
J. Engelfriet and H. J. Hoogeboom. Tree-walking pebble automata. In J. Karhumäki, H. Maurer, G. Paun, and G. Rozenberg, editors, Jewels are forever, contributions to Theoretical Computer Science in honor of Arto Salomaa, pages 72–83. Springer-Verlag, 1999.
J. Engelfriet, H.J. Hoogeboom, and J.-P. van Best. Trips on trees. Acta Cybernetica, 14:51–64, 1999.
M. Fernandez, J. Siméon, and P. Wadler, editors. XML Query languages: Experiences and Exemplars, 1999. http://www-db.research.bell-labs.com/user/simeon/xquery.html.
F. Gécseg and M. Steinby. Tree languages. In G. Rozenberg and A. Salomaa, editors, Handbook of Formal Languages, volume 3, chapter 1. Springer, 1997.
M. Kaminski and N. Francez. Finite-memory automata. Theoretical Computer Science, 134(2):329–363, 1994.
D.E. Knuth. Semantics of context-free languages. Mathematical Systems Theory, 2(2):127–145, 1968. See also Mathematical Systems Theory, 5(2):95-96, 1971.
S. Maneth and F. Neven. Structured Document Transformations Based on XSL. In R. Conner, A. Mendelzon, editors, Research Issues in Structured and Semistructured Database Programming, volume 1949 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 80–98. Springer 2000.
A. R. Meyer. Weak monadic second-order theory of successor is not elementary recursive. In R. Parikh, editors, Logic Colloquim, volume 453 of Lecture Notes in Mathematics, pages 132–154. Springer, 1975.
T. Milo, D. Suciu, and V. Vianu. Type checking for XML transformers. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, pages 11–22. ACM Press, 2000.
E. Moriya. On two-way tree automata. Information Processing Letters, 50:117–121, 1994.
M. Murata. Extended Path Expressions for XML. To appear in Proceedings of the Twentieth ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems. ACM Press, 2001.
F. Neven. Extensions of attribute grammars for structured document queries. In R. Conner, A. Mendelzon, editor, Research Issues in Structured and Semistructured Database Programming, volume 1949 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 99–116. Springer 2000.
F. Neven and T. Schwentick. Query automata. To appear in Theoretical Computer Science. Extended abstrast in Proceedings of the Eighteenth ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, pages 205–214. ACM Press, 1999.
F. Neven and T. Schwentick. Expressive and efficient pattern languages for treestructured data. In Proc. 19th Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS 2000), Dallas, pages 145–156, 2000.
F. Neven and T. Schwentick. On the power of tree-walking automata. To appear in Information and Computation. Extended abstract in 27th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, pages 547–560, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 1853. Springer, 2000.
F. Neven, T. Schwentick, and V. Vianu. Towards regular languages over infinte alphabets. Submitted.
F. Neven and J. Van den Bussche. Expressiveness of structured document query languages based on attribute grammars. To appear in the Journal of the ACM. Extended abstract appeared in Proceedings of the Seventeenth ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, pages 11–17. ACM Press, 1998.
A. Neumann and H. Seidl. Locating matches of tree patterns in forests. In V. Arvind and R. Ramanujam, editors, Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science, pages 134–145, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 1530. Springer, 1998.
T. Schwentick. On Diving in Trees. In M. Nielsen and B. Rovan, editors, Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2000), pages 660–669, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 1893. Springer, 2000
W. Thomas. Languages, automata, and logic. In G. Rozenberg and A. Salomaa, editors, Handbook of Formal Languages, volume 3, chapter 7. Springer, 1997.
World Wide Web Consortium. XML Query Requirements. Latest version: http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlquery-reg.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Neven, F., Schwentick, T. (2003). Automata- and Logic-Based Pattern Languages for Tree-Structured Data. In: Bertossi, L., Katona, G.O.H., Schewe, KD., Thalheim, B. (eds) Semantics in Databases. SiD 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2582. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36596-6_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36596-6_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00957-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36596-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive