Data on the Web

The Web is causing a revolution in how we represent, retrieve, and process information. Its growth has given us a universally accessible database - but in the form of a largely unorganized collection of documents. This is changing, thanks to the simultaneous emergence of new ways of representing data: from within the Web community, XML; and from within the database community, semistructured data. The convergence of these two approaches has rendered them nearly identical. Now, there is a concerted effort to develop effective techniques for retrieving and processing both kinds of data. "Data on the Web" is the only comprehensive, up-to-date examination of these rapidly evolving retrieval and processing strategies, which are of critical importance for almost all Web- and data-intensive enterprises. This book offers detailed solutions to a wide range of practical problems while equipping you with a keen understanding of the fundamental issues - including data models, query languages, and schemas - involved in their design, implementation, and optimization. You'll find it to be compelling reading, whether your interest is that of a practitioner involved in a database-driven Web enterprise or a researcher in computer science or related field. This work: provides an in-depth look at XML and other technologies for publishing structured documents on the Web; examines recently developed methods for querying and updating structured Web documents and semistructured data, including XML-QL and XSL; looks deeper into the convergence of Web and database approaches to semistructured data presentation and querying; details practical examples of how these techniques are already being applied-and how they will be used in the near future; and, teaches sound techniques for writing queries over Web data, describing loose schemas over partially structured data, and implementing and optimizing queries on semistructured data.