On the Development of a User-Defined Quality Measurement Tool for XML Documents

The capability of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for data representation has been widely accepted by research communities and industries. Even though it can be used for efficient data transfer, many industries look for a more promising language on which to rely when it comes to their important data. An ability to provide good XML data quality is necessary to make this data format more reliable and usable. To measure data quality, the current methods are largely driven by structural and technical factors and often assess data quality impartially, not accounting for contextual factors. It is well known that different data share common quality features: completeness, validity, accuracy and timeliness. Nevertheless, the measurement of quality features will be unique, based on the data format. The measurement of quality for XML documents cannot be generalised from quality measurement in other data formats. In this chapter, we describe the development of a user-defined quality metric for XML documents. For implementation, we develop a tool that enables users to control XML data quality. We use a case study in health informatics as the proof of concept.