A Z Approach in Validating ORA-SS Data Models

The rapid growth of the World Wide Web has resulted in more data being accessed over the Internet. In turn there is an increase in the use of semistructured data, which plays a crucial role in many web applications particularly with the introduction of XML and its related technologies. This increase in use makes the design of good semistructured data structures essential. The Object Relationship Attribute model for Semistructured data (ORA-SS) is a graphical notation for designing and representing semistructured data. In this paper, we demonstrate an approach to formally validate the ORA-SS data models in order to enhance the correctness of semistructured data design. A mathematical semantics for the ORA-SS notation is defined using the Z formal language, and further validation processes are carried out to check the correctness of the semistructured data models at both the schema and instance levels.