XML Schema Versioning

• Thesis title in English: XML Schema Versioning
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2008/2009
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Software Engineering (32-KSI)
• Supervisor: doc. RNDr. Irena Holubová, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 28.01.2009
• Date of assignment: 28.01.2009

Guidelines

Since XML has become a de-facto standard for data representation and manipulation, there exists a huge amount of applications having their data represented in XML. However, since most of the applications are dynamic, sooner or later the structure of the data needs to be changed, whereas we still need to be able to work with the old as well as new data. We speak about so-called schema versioning, i.e. a situation that the application needs to be able to handle different versions of the data and their schemas and, especially, to be able to access (usually to query) them.
The aim of this work is a research on possibilities and limitations of techniques for XML schema versioning. First of all it is necessary to analyze existing solutions (both theoretical and commercial) and to discuss their advantages and disadvantages. The core of the work should be a proposal and implementation of own approach facing selected disadvantages of the existing ones. The work will include experimental results.

References

Mlynkova, I. - Necasky, M. - Pokorny, J. - Richta, K. - Toman, K. - Toman, V.: Technologie XML - Principy a aplikace v praxi. Grada Publishing, Prague, Czech Republic, zari 2008. ISBN 978-80-247-2725-7.

W3C. W3C Technical Reports and Publications. http://www.w3.org/TR/

Guerrini, G. - Mesiti, M.: XML Schema Evolution and Versioning: Current Approaches and Future Trends. Open and Novel Issues in XML Database Applications: Future Directions and Advanced Technologies, Idea Group Publishing, 2008/9.

Roddick, J.F.: A Survey of Schema Versioning Issues for Database Systems. Information and Software Technology 37(7): 383-393. 1995.

Hoylen, S.: XML Schema Versioning Use Cases. Available at http://www.w3c.org/XML/2005/xsd-versioning-use-cases/.

Rahm, E. - Bernstein, P. A.: An Online Bibliography on Schema Evolution. SIGMOD Rec., 35(4):30-31, 2006.