A unified approach to structured and XML data modeling and manipulation

In this paper we propose an approach to defining logical database models, based on the instantiation of a general abstract model, and discuss its application to the management of mixed XML/relational data. Our abstract model is equipped with a parametric query algebra and relational-like algebraic equivalences, that do not have to be redefined when new models are generated. We present an instantiation of our model that unifies the main approaches to represent and manipulate relational and XML data, and in particular SQL, SQL/XML, XQuery, and Oracle’s XML Type. Additionally, our algebra can represent queries not expressible by other algebras taken from the literature. Among others, it can represent nested XQuery expressions with no constraints on nesting and on node constructors.