ADBMS

Ramez Elmasri , Shamkant B. Navathe(2016) Fundamentals of Database

Systems (7th. Edition), Pearson, isbn 10: 0-13-397077-9; isbn-13:978-0-13-397077-7.
Unit 1
Introduction
Structured, Semi structured, and Unstructured Data.
XML Hierarchical (Tree) Data Model.
XML Documents, DTD, and XML Schema.
XML Documents and Databases.
XML Querying.
XPath
XQuery
 Introduction

 XML: Extensible Markup Language

 Defined by the WWW Consortium (W3C)
 Originally intended as a document markup language not a database language
 Documents have tags giving extra information about sections of the document
 E.g. <title> XML </title> <slide> Introduction …</slide>
 Derived from SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), but simpler to use than SGML
 Extensible, unlike HTML
 Users can add new tags, and separately specify how the tag should be handled for display
 Goal was (is?) to replace HTML as the language for publishing documents on the Web
 XML Introduction (Cont.)

 The ability to specify new tags, and to create nested tag structures made XML a great way to exchange
data, not just documents.
 Much of the use of XML has been in data exchange applications, not as a replacement for HTML
 Tags make data (relatively) self-documenting

 E.g.
<bank>
<account>
<account-number> A-101 </account-number>
<branch-name> Downtown </branch-name>
<balance> 500 </balance>
</account>
<depositor>
<account-number> A-101 </account-
number>
<customer-name> Johnson </customer-name>
</depositor>
</bank>
 XML: Motivation

 Data interchange is critical in today’s networked world

 Examples:
 Banking: funds transfer
 Order processing (especially inter-company orders)
 Scientific data
– Chemistry: ChemML, …
– Genetics: BSML (Bio-Sequence Markup Language), …
 Paper flow of information between organizations is being replaced by electronic flow of information
 Each application area has its own set of standards for representing information
 XML has become the basis for all new generation data interchange formats
 XML Motivation (Cont.)
 Earlier generation formats were based on plain text with line
headers indicating the meaning of fields
 Similar in concept to email headers
 Does not allow for nested structures, no standard “type”
language
 Tied too closely to low level document structure (lines, spaces,
etc)
 Each XML based standard defines what are valid elements, using
 XML type specification languages to specify the syntax
 DTD (Document Type Descriptors)
 XML Schema
 Plus textual descriptions of the semantics
 XML allows new tags to be defined as required
 However, this may be constrained by DTDs
 A wide variety of tools is available for parsing, browsing and
querying XML documents/data
 Structure of XML Data

 Tag: label for a section of data

 Element: section of data beginning with <tagname> and ending
with matching </tagname>
 Elements must be properly nested
 Proper nesting
 <account> … <balance> …. </balance> </account>
 Improper nesting
 <account> … <balance> …. </account> </balance>
 Formally: every start tag must have a unique matching end tag, that is in
the context of the same parent element.
 Every document must have a single top-level element
 Example of Nested Elements

<bank-1>
<customer>
<customer-name> Hayes </customer-name>
<customer-street> Main </customer-street>
<customer-city> Harrison </customer-
city>
<account>
<account-number> A-102
<branch-name> </account-number>
Perryridge </branch-name>
<balance> 400 </balance>
</account>
<account>
…
</account>
</customer>
.
.
</bank-1>
 Motivation for Nesting

 Nesting of data is useful in data transfer

 Example: elements representing customer-id, customer name, and
address nested within an order element
 Nesting is not supported, or discouraged, in relational databases
 With multiple orders, customer name and address are stored
redundantly
 normalization replaces nested structures in each order by foreign key into
table storing customer name and address information
 Nesting is supported in object-relational databases
 But nesting is appropriate when transferring data
 External application does not have direct access to data referenced by a
foreign key
 Structure of XML Data (Cont.)

 Mixture of text with sub-elements is legal in XML.

 Example:
<account>
This account is seldom used any more.
<account-number> A-102</account-number>
<branch-name> Perryridge</branch-name>
<balance>400 </balance>
</account>
 Useful for document markup, but discouraged for data
representation
Structured, Semi Structured and Unstructured Data
Structured Data:
• represented by columns and rows in a
database.
• Databases that hold tables in this form are
called relational databases.
• The mathematical term “relation” specifies
a formed set of data held as a table.
• all row in a table has the same set of
columns.
• SQL (Structured Query Language)
programming language used for structured
data.
 Structured, Semi Structured and Unstructured Data
• Semi-Structured Data:
• Data is collected in an ad-hoc manner before it is
known how it will be stored and managed.
• This data may have a certain structure.
• All the information collected will have identical
structure.
• The schema information is mixed in with the data
values, since each data object can have different
attributes that are not known in advance.
• Hence, this type of data is sometimes referred to as
self-describing data.
Structured, Semi Structured and Unstructured Data (contd.)
• Semi-structured data may be displayed as a directed graph...
• The labels or tags on the directed edges represent the schema names—the names
of attributes, object types (or entity types or classes), and relationships.
• The internal nodes represent individual objects or composite attributes.
• The leaf nodes represent actual data values of simple (atomic) attributes.
FIGURE 1 Representing semistructured data as a graph.
 Structured, Semi Structured and Unstructured Data (contd.)

• Unstructured Data:
• Either is not organized in a pre-
defined manner or does not
have a pre-defined data model.
• Set of text-heavy but may
contain data such as numbers,
dates, and facts as well.
• Videos, audio, and binary data
files might not have a specific
structure.
XML Hierarchical (Tree) Data Model

A complex XML element called

<projects>
XML Hierarchical (Tree) Data Model (contd.)

• The basic object in XML is the XML document.

• There are two main structuring concepts that are used to construct an
XML document:
• Elements
• Attributes
• Attributes in XML provide additional information that describe
elements.
 XML Hierarchical (Tree) Data Model (contd.)
• As in HTML, elements are identified in a document by their start tag and end tag.
• The tag names are enclosed between angled brackets <…>, and end tags are further
identified by a backslash </…>.
• Complex elements are constructed from other elements hierarchically, whereas
simple elements contain data values.
• internal nodes represent complex elements, whereas leaf nodes represent simple elements.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<bookstore>
<book category="cooking">
<title lang="en">Everyday Italian</title>
<root> <author>Giada De Laurentiis</author>
<child> <year>2005</year>
<subchild>.....</subchild> <price>30.00</price>
</child> </book>
</root> <book category="web">
<title lang="en">Learning XML</title>
<author>Erik T. Ray</author>
<year>2003</year>
<price>39.95</price>
</book>
XML Hierarchical (Tree) Data Model (contd.)

Three main types of XML documents:

1. Data-centric XML documents
• small data items that follow a specific structure, may be extracted from a structured
database. They are formatted as XML documents in order to exchange them or display
them over the Web.
2. Document-centric XML documents:
• large amounts of text, such as news articles or books. There is little or no structured
data elements in these documents.
3. Hybrid XML documents:
• have parts that contains structured data and other parts that are predominantly
textual or unstructured.