The Query Language to XML Documents Connected by XLink Links

The XML linking language (XLink) is a language for describing links between resources by means of XML attributes and a special namespace. The specification of the XLink language developed by the World Wide Web consortium provides only data structures for describing links and a minimal model of their behavior. In this paper, a language that allows the application to transparently formulate queries to XLink links and traverse the arcs determined by these links is suggested. The suggested language was named XPathLink, since it was developed as a natural extension of XPath, the language for addressing structural parts of XML documents. The XPathLink encapsulates complexities of XLink syntax from the application and provides a higher abstraction level when processing a set of XML documents connected by XLink links compared to the existing approaches. An implementation of the suggested XPathLink language by functional methods is considered. The functionality of the query language to XML documents connected by XLink links is achieved owing to the integration of the suggested implementation with the general-purpose programming language Scheme at the level of nodes of the processed XML documents and Scheme functions.