Automata-based Static Analysis of XML Document Adaptation

Alessandro Solimando
(University of Genova, Italy)
Giorgio Delzanno
(University of Genova, Italy)
Giovanna Guerrini
(University of Genova, Italy)

The structure of an XML document can be optionally specified by means of XML Schema, thus enabling the exploitation of structural information for efficient document handling. Upon schema evolution, or when exchanging documents among different collections exploiting related but not identical schemas, the need may arise of adapting a document, known to be valid for a given schema S, to a target schema S'. The adaptation may require knowledge of the element semantics and cannot always be automatically derived. In this paper, we present an automata-based method for the static analysis of user-defined XML document adaptations, expressed as sequences of XQuery Update update primitives. The key feature of the method is the use of an automatic inference method for extracting the type, expressed as a Hedge Automaton, of a sequence of document updates. The type is computed starting from the original schema S and from rewriting rules that formally define the operational semantics of a sequence of document updates. Type inclusion can then be used as conformance test w.r.t. the type extracted from the target schema S'.

In Marco Faella and Aniello Murano: Proceedings Third International Symposium on Games, Automata, Logics and Formal Verification (GandALF 2012), Napoli, Italy, September 6-8, 2012, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 96, pp. 85–98.
Published: 7th October 2012.

ArXived at: https://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.96.7 bibtex PDF
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