Abstract
Functional dependencies (FDs) and multivalued dependencies (MVDs) play a fundamental role in relational databases where they provide semantics for the data and at the same time are the foundation for database design. Since XML documents are closely coupled with relational databases in that XML documents are typically exported and imported from relational databases, the study of FDs and MVDs in XML is of fundamental significance in XML research. In this paper we investigate the issue of defining multivalued dependencies in XML, a topic which to the best of our knowledge has not been previously investigated. We define multivalued dependencies in XML (XMVDs) and justify our definition by proving that, for a very general class of mappings from relations to XML, a relation satisfies an MVD if and only if the corresponding XML document satisfies the corresponding XMVD. Thus our definition of a XMVD in a XML document is a natural extension of the definition of a MVD in relations.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
S. Abiteboul, P. Buneman, and D. Suciu. Data on the Web. Morgan Kauffman, 2000.
M. Arenas and L. Libkin. A normal form for xml documents. In Proc. ACM PODS Conference, pages 85–96, 2002.
P. Atzeni and V. DeAntonellis. Foundations of databases. Benjamin Cummings, 1993.
C. Beeri, R. Fagin, and J.H. Howard. A complete exiomatization for functional and multivalued dependencies. In ACM SIGMOD Conference, pages 47–61, 1977.
P. Buneman, S. Davidson, W. Fan, and C. Hara. Reasoning about keys for xml. In International Workshop on Database Programming Languages, 2001.
P. Buneman, S. Davidson, W. Fan, C. Hara, and W. Tan. Keys for xml. Computer Networks, 39(5):473–487, 2002.
P. Buneman, W. Fan, J. Simeon, and S. Weinstein. Constraints for semistructured data and xml. ACM SIGMOD Record, 30(1):45–47, 2001.
P. Buneman, W. Fan, and S. Weinstein. Path constraints on structured and semistructured data. In Proc. ACM PODS Conference, pages 129–138, 1998.
W. Fan and J. Simeon. Integrity constraints for xml. In Proc. ACM PODS Conference, pages 23–34, 2000.
M. Levene and G. Loizu. Axiomatization of functional dependencies in incomplete relations. Theoretical Computer Science, 206:283–300, 1998.
M. Levene and G. Loizu. A guided tour of relational databases and beyond. Springer, 1999.
J. Shanmugasundaram, K. Tufte, C. Zhang, G. He, D. J. DeWitt, and J. F. Naughton:. Relational databases for querying xml documents: Limitations and opportunities. In VLDB Conference, pages 302–314, 1999.
S.J. Thomas and P.C. Fischer. Nested relational structures. In P. Kanellakis, editor, The theory of databases, pages 269–307. JAI Press, 1986.
M. W. Vincent and M. Levene. Restructuring partitioned normal relations without information loss. SIAM Journal on Computing, 39(5):1550–1567, 2000.
M.W. Vincent and J. Liu. Strong functional dependencies and a redundancy free normal form for xml. Submitted for publication, 2002.
M.W. Vincent and J. Liu. Functional dependencies for xml. In Fifth Asian Pacific Web Conference, 2003.
M.W. Vincent and J. Liu. Multivalued dependencies and a 4nf for xml. In 15th CAISE Conference, 2003.
J. Widom. Data management for xml-research directions. IEEE data Engineering Bulletin, 22(3):44–52, 1999.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Vincent, M.W., Liu, J. (2003). Multivalued Dependencies in XML. In: James, A., Younas, M., Lings, B. (eds) New Horizons in Information Management. BNCOD 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2712. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45073-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45073-4_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40536-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45073-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive