Abstract
There is much current interest in publishing and viewing databases as XML documents. The general benefits of this approach follow from the popularity of XML and the tool set available for visualizing and processing information encoded in this universal standard. In this paper, we explore the additional and unique benefits achieved by this approach on temporal database applications. We show that XML with XQuery can provide surprisingly effective solutions to the problem of supporting historical queries on past content of database relations and their evolution. Indeed, using XML, the histories of database relations can be naturally represented by temporally grouped data models. Thus, we identify mappings from relations to XML that are most conducive to modeling and querying database histories, and show that temporal queries that would be difficult to express in SQL can be easily expressed in standard XQuery. This approach is very general, insofar as it can be used to store the version history of arbitrary documents and, for relational databases, it also supports queries on the evolution of their schema.
Then, we turn to the problem of supporting efficiently the storage and the querying of relational table histories. We present an experimental study of the pros and cons of using native XML databases, versus using traditional databases, where the XML-represented histories are supported as views on the historical tables.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
T. Amagasa, M. Yoshikawa, and S. Uemura, “A data model for temporal XML documents,” in DEXA, 2000.
T. Amagasa, M. Yoshikawa, and S. Uemura, “Realizing temporal XML repositories using temporal relational databases,” in CODAS, 2001, pp. 63–68.
D. Beech and B. Mahbod, “Generalized version control in an object-oriented database,” in ICDE, 1988 pp. 14–22.
E. Bertino, E. Ferrai, and G. Guerrini, “A formal temporal object-oriented data model,” in EDBT, 1996.
P Bruni and R Naidoo. DB2 for OS/390 and Data, Compression. IBM, Redbooks, 1998.
P. Buneman, S. Khanna, K. Ajima, and W. Tan, “Archiving scientific data,” in ACM SIGMOD, 2002.
M. Carey, J. Kiernan, J. Shanmugasundaram et al., “XPERANTO: A middleware for publishing object-relational data as XML documents,” in VLDB, 2000.
S.S. Chawathe, S. Abiteboul, and J. Widom, “Managing historical semistructured data,” Theory and Practice of Object, S,ystems 24(4), 1999, 1–20.
C. Chen and C. Zaniolo, “Universal temporal extensions for database languages,” in ICDE, 1999.
S.Y. Chien, V.J. Tsotras, and C. Zaniolo. Efficient schemes for managing multiversion XML documents. VLDB, J,ournal, 2003.
J. Chomicki, D. Toman, and M.H. Böhlen, “Querying ATSQL databases with temporal logic,” TODS 26(2), 2001, 145–178.
H. Chou and W. Kim, “A unifying framework for version control in a CAD environment,” in VLDB, 1986.
J. Clifford, A. Croker, F. Grandi, and A. Tuzhilin,” On temporal grouping,” in Recent, Advances in Temporal, Databases, Springer, Verlag, 1995, pp. 194–213.
J. Clifford, C. E. Dyreson, T. Isakowitz, C. S. Jensen, and R.T. Snodgrass, “On the semantics of “now” in databases,” TODS 22(2), 1997, 171–214.
DB2 V8.1 Documentation. http://www.ibm.com/db2/
DB2 XML, Extender. http://www-3.ibm.com/software/data/db2/extenders/xmlext/
C.E. Dyreson, “Observing transaction-time semantics with TTXPath,” in WISE, 2001.
Electronic, Business using eXtensible, Markup Language(ebXML). http://www.ebxml.org
M. Fernandez, W. Tan, and D. Suciu, “Silkroute: Trading between relations and XML,” in 8th Intl. WWW, Conf., 1999.
J.E. Funderburk, G. Kiernan, J. Shanmugasundaram, E. Shekita, and C. Wei, “XTABLES: Bridging relational technology and XML,” IBM Systems Journal 41(4), 2002.
F Wang and C Zaniolo, “Preserving and querying histories of XML-published relational databases,” in ECDM, 2002.
D. Gao and R. T. Snodgrass, “Temporal slicing in the evaluation of XML queries,” in VLDB, 2003.
Geography Markup Language (GML).
M. Gergatsoulis and Y. Stavrakas, “Representing changes in XML documents using dimensions,” in Xsym, 2003.
F. Grandi, “An annotated bibliography on temporal and evolution aspects in the world wide web,” in TimeCenter, Technique Report, 2003.
F. Grandi and F. Mandreoli, “The valid web: An XML/XSL infrastructure for temporal management of web documents,” in ADVIS, 2000.
G. Guerrini M. Mesiti E. Camossi, and E. Bertino, “Automatic evolution of multigranular temporal objects,” in TIME, 2002.
ICAP: Incorporating, Change Management into Archival, Processes. http://wis.cs.ucla.edu/projects/icap/
Information technology - database languages—SQL part 14: XML-related specifications.
C. S. Jensen and C. E. Dyreson (eds), “A consensus glossary of temporal database concepts—february 1998 version,” Temporal Databases: Research and Practice, 1998, pp. 367–405.
H. Liefke and D. Suciu, “XMill: An efficient compressor for XML data,” in SIGMOD, 2000.
Microsoft XML. http://www.microsoft.com/xml/
Oracle documentation, http://otn.oracle.com
Oracle Flashback technology, http://otn.oracle.com
G. Ozsoyoglu and R. T. Snodgrass, “Temporal and real-time databases: A survey,” IEEE, T,ransactions on Knowledge and Data, E,ngineering, 7(4),1995, 513–532.
M.J. Rochkind, “The source code control system,” IEEE Transactions on Software, Engineering, SE-1(4),1975, 364–370
J.F. Roddick, “A survey of schema versioning issues for database systems,” Information and Software Technology 37(7), 1995, 383–393.
J.F. Roddick, “A model for schema versioning in temporal database systems,” in Proc. 19th. ACSC Conf., 1996. pp. 446–452.
H. Schning, “Tamino—a DBMS designed for XML,” in ICDE, 2001.
J. Shanmugasundaram et al., “Efficiently publishing relational data as XML documents,” in VLDB, 2000.
R. T. Snodgrass, The TSQL2 Temporal, Q,uery Language. Kluwer, 1995.
R. Snodgrass, Temporal, Object-Oriented, Databases: ACritical, Comparision. Addions-Wesley/ACM, Press, 1995.
R. T. Snodgrass. Developing, Time-Oriented, Database Applications in SQL. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
The extensible stylesheet language (XSL). http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/
F. Wang and C. Zaniolo, “Representing and querying the evolution of databases and their schemas in XML,” in Intl. Workshop on Web, Engineering, SEKE, 2003.
F. Wang and C. Zaniolo, “Publishing and querying the histories of archived relational databases in XML,” in WISE, 2003.
X-Hive/DB, http://www.x-hive.com.
XML, Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.0. http://www.w3.org/tr/xlink/
XQuery 1.0: An XML query language. http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/
C. Zaniolo, S. Ceri, C. Faloutsos, R. T. Snodgrass, V.S. Subrahmanian, and R. Zicari, Advanced, Database Systems, Morgan, Kaufmann Publishers, 1997.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wang, F., Zaniolo, C. An XML-Based Approach to Publishing and Querying the History of Databases. World Wide Web 8, 233–259 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11280-005-1317-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11280-005-1317-7