Standing on the Shoulders of Ants: Towards More Efficient XML-to-Relational Mapping Strategies

As XML has become a standard for data representation, it is inevitable to propose and implement techniques for efficient managing of XML data. A natural alternative is to exploit features and functions of (O)RDBMSs, i.e. to rely on their long theoretical and practical history. The main concern of such techniques is the choice of an appropriate XML-to-relational mapping strategy. In this paper we propose an enhancing of so-called adaptive mapping methods which evaluate several mapping possibilities and choose the one which suits the current application the most. We optimize the process of searching the optimal strategy using a heuristic called ant colony optimization and we enhance the adaptivity using similarity of XML data and ideas of user-driven techniques.