Update transaction translation from SQL to JDOM using XML schema

Abstract

With the emergence and ease of the Internet, the electronic data interchange and management standards are being transformed and reformed. During this information revolution, Extensible Markup Language (XML) has been recognized to provide a file format for representing data, a schema for describing data structure and semantics constraints, as well as a mechanism for extending and annotating HTML with semantic information. Therefore, XML and its related technologies (e.g. XML Database System) are considered as the trend of e-commerce and Internet technology in the business world. However, Relational Database System is still the most common and popular strategic method to deal with the data storage and transaction management in both B2B and B2C systems nowadays. It follows that it is infeasible for the companies to give up their existing relational database systems completely, convert all of the contents into XML format quickly and then develop the new one with XML document as the fundamental storage unit only. In order to service the need for data interchange between the current Relational Database System and the new XML Database System, it is essential to perform the database reengineering from Relational to XML and enhance the database interoperability between their transactions and data manipulation, e.g. update the new record. More importantly, due to different database architectures, users should use two different types of Query Languages for data retrieval and manipulation on these two systems, i.e. SQL (Structured Query Language) for Relational Database and XQuery (XML Query Language) for Native XML database. Obviously, it may not be possible for users and even developers to familiar with both of them easily and quickly. In view of the effectiveness and efficiency of handling the query languages on the database system interchangeably, translating from SQL to the compatible format in XML (JDOM) is a must so that users just need to use SQL for accessing and manipulating the data on both Relational and XML Database Systems. This project aims to investigate the feasibility of Update Transaction Translation from SQL to JDOM using XML Schema. Firstly, the schema translation should be done from Relational to XML Schema and data conversion from relational to XML database should be performed. Secondly, the input SQL statement will be analyzed for constructing necessary JDOM objects which will be manipulated in the XML database. Then, the comparison of the data between the translated XML documents and original relational data will be conducted to verify the feasibility and possibility of the update transaction translation. The result of this project is a XML Gateway that can monitor the query language entered by the user and analyze which operation (INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE) should be done on the relational and XML databases. It can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the existing database systems and especially for the Internet computing as XML is regarded as the latest standard for information transmission on the web. To conclude, it solves the problem of adapting the ever-changing query languages on different database systems and improves the performance of both relational and XML database by introducing an innovative approach for manipulating the data more easily and quickly as only SQL is required.