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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 4817–4822Cite as

XML Typechecking

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Definition

In general, typechecking refers to the problem where, given a program P, an input type σ, and an output type τ, one must decide whether P is type-safe, that is, whether it produces only outputs of type τ when run on inputs of type σ. In the XML context, typechecking problems mainly arise in two forms:

  • XML-to-XML transformations, where P transforms XML documents conforming to a given type into XML documents conforming to another given type.

  • XML publishing, where P transforms relational databases into XML views of these databases and it is necessary to check that all generated views conform to a specified type.

A type for XML documents is typically a regular tree language, usually expressed as a schema written in a schema language such as DTD, XML Schema, or Relax NG (see XML Types). In the XML publishing case, the input type σ is a relational database schema, possibly with integrity constraints.

Typechecking problems may or may not be decidable, depending on (i) the class of...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Paris 11, Orsay Cedex, France

    Véronique Benzaken

  2. C.N.R.S. and University Paris 7, Paris, France

    Giuseppe Castagna

  3. The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Haruo Hosoya

  4. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Benjamin C. Pierce

  5. Hasselt University and Transnational University of Limburg, Diepenbeek, Belgium

    Stijn Vansummeren

Authors
  1. Véronique Benzaken
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  2. Giuseppe Castagna
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  3. Haruo Hosoya
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  4. Benjamin C. Pierce
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  5. Stijn Vansummeren
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Véronique Benzaken .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Laboratoire d'Informatique de Grenoble, CNRS and LIG, Grenoble, France

    Sihem Amer-Yahia

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Benzaken, V., Castagna, G., Hosoya, H., Pierce, B.C., Vansummeren, S. (2018). XML Typechecking. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_788

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