XML schema re-engineering using a conceptual schema approach

Abstract

At present, the extensible Markup Language (XML) is popular for both data presentation and data transfer activities. XML Documents follow XML Schemas. It is possible to use them as database schemas and databases. An XML Schema can be hierarchical or flat. The hierarchical one is normally used for data presentation and the flat one is for data transfer. This research project emphasizes on the data transfer application of XML. The objective of the project is to develop a technique to reengineer poorly designed XML Schemas into the normalized ones. A software tool is developed. The tool accepts well-formatted XML Schemas and well-formatted and validated XML Documents as data sources. They are reengineered into the optimal normal form schemas which guarantee not to have redundancies. The Nijssen 's Information Analysis Methodology (NIAM) is used as the conceptual schema model of XML databases. © 2005 IEEE.