A Rule-based Conversion of an Object-Oriented Database Schema to a Schema in XML Schema

Data interchange between different computer systems is a common task today, and the use of XML as an exchanging protocol has increasing. XML Schema recommendation allows the definition of an XML structure to be used for applications that communicate data each other. This paper proposes a rule-based approach for converting object-oriented (OO) database schemata to XML Schema schemata, as well as an algorithm that defines the application of the rules. We consider a schema mapping process in the OO -> XML direction based on a detailed analysis of the OO database model concepts. A prototype tool was implemented to validate the process. Compared to related work, our proposal considers the mapping of all OODB model concepts to equivalent data structures in XML.