Updating XML views published over relational databases: Towards the existence of a correct update mapping

XML data management using relational database systems has been intensively studied in the last few years. However, in order for such systems to be viable, they must support not only queries, but also updates over virtual XML views that wrap the relational data. While view updating is a long-standing difficult issue in the relational context, the flexible XML data model and nested XML query language both pose additional challenges for view updating. This paper addresses the question, if for a given update over an XML view, a correct relational update translation exists. First, we propose a clean extended-source theory as criteria for determining whether a given translation mapping is correct. To determine the existence of such a correct mapping, we classify a view update as either un-translatable, conditionally or unconditionally translatable under a given update translation policy. This classification depends on several features of the XML view and the update: (a) granularity of the update at the view side, (b) properties of the view construction, and (c) types of duplication appearing in the view. These features are represented in the Annotated Schema Graph. This is further utilized by our Schema-driven Translatability Reasoning algorithm (STAR) to classify a given update into one of the three above update categories. The correctness of the algorithm is proven using our clean extended-source theory. This technique represents a practical approach that can be applied by any existing view update system in industry and academia for analyzing the translatability of a given update statement before translation of it is attempted. To illustrate the working algorithm, we provide a concrete case study on the translatability of XML view updates. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.