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Extensions of Attribute Grammars for Structured Document Queries

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Research Issues in Structured and Semistructured Database Programming (DBPL 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1949))

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Abstract

Document specification languages like XML, model docu- ments using extended context-free grammars. These differ from standard context-free grammars in that they allow arbitrary regular expressions on the right-hand side of productions. To query such documents, we in- troduce a new form of attribute grammars (extended AGs) that work directly over extended context-free grammars rather than over standard context-free grammars. Viewed as a query language, extended AGs are particularly relevant as they can take into account the inherent order of the children of a node in a document. We show that two key properties of standard attribute grammars carry over to extended AGs: efficiency of evaluation and decidability of well-definedness. We further characterize the expressiveness of extended AGs in terms of monadic second-order logic and establish the complexity of their non-emptiness and equiva- lence problem to be complete for EXPTIME. As an application we show that the Region Algebra expressions can be efficiently translated into extended AGs. This translation drastically improves the known upper bound on the complexity of the emptiness and equivalence test for Re- gion Algebra expressions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universitaire Campus, Dept. WNI, Limburgs Universitair Centrum, B-3590, Infolab, Diepenbeek, Belgium

    Frank Neven

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  1. Frank Neven
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Strathclyde, G1 1XH, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

    Richard Connor

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 6 King’s College Road, M5S 3H5, Ontario, Toronto, Canada

    Alberto Mendelzon

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Neven, F. (2000). Extensions of Attribute Grammars for Structured Document Queries. In: Connor, R., Mendelzon, A. (eds) Research Issues in Structured and Semistructured Database Programming. DBPL 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1949. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44543-9_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44543-9_7

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