Skip to main content
Log in

A Transaction Model for XML Databases

  • Published:
World Wide Web Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The hierarchical and semistructured nature of XML data may cause complicated update behavior. Updates should not be limited to entire document trees, but should ideally involve subtrees and even individual elements. Providing a suitable scheduling algorithm for semistructured data can significantly improve collaboration systems that store their data—e.g., word processing documents or vector graphics—as XML documents. In this paper we show that concurrency control mechanisms in CVS, relational, and object-oriented database systems are inadequate for collaborative systems based on semistructured data. We therefore propose two new locking schemes based on path locks which are tightly coupled to the document instance. We also introduce two scheduling algorithms that can both be used with any of the two proposed path lock schemes. We prove that both schedulers guarantee serializability, and show that the conflict rules are necessary.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. S. Abiteboul, “Querying semi-structured data,” in Proceedings of ICDT'97, 1997, pp. 1–18.

  2. S. Abiteboul, P. Buneman, and D. Suciu, Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML, San Francisco, Morgan-Kaufmann, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  3. S. Abiteboul, D. Quass, J. McHugh, J. Widom, and J. Wiener, “The LOREL query language for semistructured data,” The International Journal on Digital Libraries 1(1), 1997, 68–88.

    Google Scholar 

  4. N. Barghouti and G. Kaiser, “Concurrency control in advanced database applications,” ACM Computing Surveys 23(3), 1991, 269–317.

    Google Scholar 

  5. P. Bernstein, V. Hadzilacos, and N. Goodman, Concurrency Control and Recovery in Database Systems, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1987.

    Google Scholar 

  6. T. Bray, J. Paoli, et al., “Extensible markup language (XML) 1.0 (2nd Edition),” W3C Recommendation, 2000.

  7. P. Buneman, M. Fernández, and D. Suciu, “UnQL: A query language and algebra for semistructured data based on structural recursion,” VLDB Journal 9(1), 2000, 76–110.

    Google Scholar 

  8. P. Cederqvist, et al., “Version Management with CVS,” in WWW Manual, http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/, 1993.

  9. W. Cellary, E. Gelenbe, and T. Morzy, “Concurrency control in distributed database systems,” Studies in Computer Science and Artificial Science (3), 1988.

  10. J. Cowan and T. Richard, “XML information set,” W3C Recommendation, 2001.

  11. C. Date, An Introduction to Database Systems, 7th Edition. Addison-Wesley/Longman, 2000.

  12. S. Dekeyser, “Multiple query environment problems,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Antwerp, 2003, http://win-www.ruca.ua.ac.be/u/dekeyser/

  13. S. Dekeyser and J. Hidders, “A basic locking protocol for XML,” Technical Report 02-05, University of Antwerp, 2002.

  14. S. Dekeyser and J. Hidders, “Path locks for XML document collaboration,” in Proceedings of the Third WISE Conference, 2002.

  15. S. Dekeyser and J. Hidders, “A commit scheduler for XML databases,” in Proceedings of the Fifth Asia Pacific Web Conference, Xi'an, China, 2003.

  16. S. Dekeyser, J. Hidders, and J. Paredaens, “Instance independent concurrency control for semistructured databases,” in Proceedings of the Eleventh Italian Symposium on Advanced Database Systems (SEBD), Cetraro, Italy, 2003.

  17. A. Deutsch, M. Fernández, and D. Suciu, “Storing semistructured data with STORED,” in Proceedings ACM SIGMOD, Philadephia, PA, 1999.

  18. K. Eswaran, J. Gray, R. Lorie, and I. Traiger, “The notions of consistency and predicate locks in a database system,” Communications of the ACM 19(11), 1976, 624–633.

    Google Scholar 

  19. M. Fernández, J. Marsh, and M. Nagy, “XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 data model,”W3CWorking Draft, 2002.

  20. D. Florescu and D. Kossmann, “Storing and querying XML data using an RDBMS,” IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin 22(3), 1999, 27–34.

    Google Scholar 

  21. D. Florescu, A. Levy, M. Fernández, and D. Suciu, “A query language for a Web-site management system,” SIGMOD Record 26(3), 1997, 4–11.

    Google Scholar 

  22. J. Gray, “Notes on database operating systems,” in Operating Systems: An Advanced Course, Springer, New York, 1978.

    Google Scholar 

  23. J. Gray, A. Lorie, et al., “Granularity of locks in a large shared data base,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, Framingham, MA, 1975.

  24. J. Gray, G. Putzolo, and I. Traiger, “Granularity of locks and degrees of consistency in a shared data base,” in Modeling in Data Base Management Systems, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1976.

  25. H. Hunt and D. Rosenkrantz, “The complexity of testing predicate locks,” in Proceedings of the 1979 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, Boston, MA, 1979.

  26. S. Khoshafian, Concurrency Control in Object-Oriented Databases, Wiley, New York, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  27. V. Lanin and D. Shasha, “Tree locking on changing trees,” in Proc. of FJCC, 1986, pp. 380–389.

  28. P. Lehti, “Design and implementation of a data manipulation processor for an XML query language,” Technical report, Technische Universitat Darmstadt, http://www.lehti.de/beruf/diplomarbeit. pdf, 2001.

  29. M. Loomis, Object Databases, The Essentials, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  30. J. McHugh, S. Abiteboul, R. Goldman, D. Quass, and J. Widom, “Lore: A database management system for semistructured data,” SIGMOD Record 26(3), 1997, 54–66.

    Google Scholar 

  31. C. Papadimitriou, The Theory of Database Concurrency Control, Computer Science Press, Rockville, MD, 1986.

    Google Scholar 

  32. A. Silberschatz and Z. Kedem, “Consistency in hierarchical database systems,” Journal of the ACM 27(1), 1980, 72–80.

    Google Scholar 

  33. I. Tatarinov, Z. Ives, A. Halevy, and D. Weld, “Updating XML,” in Proceedings of SIGMOD Conference, 2001.

  34. G. Weikum and G. Vossen,,Transactional Information Systems, Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  35. L. Wood et al., “Document object model (DOM) level 1 specification,” W3C Recommendation, 1998.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Dekeyser, S., Hidders, J. & Paredaens, J. A Transaction Model for XML Databases. World Wide Web 7, 29–57 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:WWWJ.0000015864.75561.98

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:WWWJ.0000015864.75561.98

Navigation