Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) (Hardcover)

by Serge Abiteboul (Author), Dan Suciu (Author), Peter Buneman (Author) "UNTIL A FEW YEARS AGO the publication of electronic data was limited to a few scientific and technical areas..." (more)
Key Phrases: semistructured data instance, semistructured query languages, semistructured data model, Morgan Kaufmann, Information Manifold, Famous Recipes (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML is an examination of XML as a universal data transfer language and the theory behind the merging of the document-centric Web with a data-driven infrastructure. The book is intended as a textbook analysis of the issues, as well as background material for tool developers and others interested in the serious architectural details.

Aimed at readers already familiar with database concepts, the book includes little introductory material. It quickly lays out the concepts of self-describing semi-structured data and how XML fits into this approach to data representation. The discussion deals with XML as a data transfer mechanism and not a presentation language. While there is a quick explanation of DTDs, Xlink, and XPointer, readers should be fairly familiar with XML before approaching this advanced title.

The meat of the book revolves around query languages for XML. The authors present XML-QL and XSL in depth as examples. Then they move into much more advanced concepts such as schema formalisms, path constraints, and storage architectures. The book wraps up with a look at Lore and Strudel--two real-world systems that work with semi-structured data. Because of its intensive study of database and query theory, this textbook isn't for the ordinary Web developer. If data architectures are your expertise, however, Data on the Web may open new design doors. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: Object database models, basic XML syntax, UnQL, XML-QL, XSL, StruQL, schema formalisms, extracting schemas from queries, semistructured data servers, Lore, Strudel, and XML-based database products.

From Library Journal
Most data on the web are not well structured, making the search and retrieval process difficult since the spiders, robots, and other search engines don't really understand the context of the data they are indexing and storing. This very advanced book examines the new retrieval and processing techniques as semistructured data and XML (as a data transfer language) that aim to merge a document-based web with a data-driven infrastructure. Hardcore programmers will want this. Recommended for university and large public libraries.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 257 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition (October 26, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155860622X
• ISBN-13: 978-1558606227
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #776,897 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars this book does fill a need, February 16, 2000

By A Customer

For the most part, this book covers the academic research on semistructured database management that started in the mid-90s (pre-dating the XML explosion - sometimes research is ahead of practice!). Such issues are not that interesting for folks who are doing bread-and-butter client-side XML development, and whose interest in "XML" and "databases" is limited to knowing how Oracle 8i implements its "XML out the top" package. However, the book is relevant to people who are already "in" the semistructured data management space - people who are thinking ahead to some of the potential directions that XML query languages might take, for example. The authors are prominent and well-respected in this area.

One of my main beefs with the book is that it does not really say anything about what XML databases might look like in practice. This is a tall and perhaps unfair order, since we don't yet have standards for XML schemas and query languages. But I have yet to see XML database proponents provide a clear and convincing explanation of why XML is going to be a way to structure stored data as well as a way of transmitting and reformatting data.

42 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This great book is obligatory for people working with XML !, October 20, 1999

By A Customer

This book gives an excellent introduction into the formal framework underlying XML. It exposes an important connection between XML and the existing research in databases about the semistructured data model. XML is about to becoming a crucial standard - not just for data exchange, but also for representing data in databases.

The book describes the formal framework behind XML and describes several crucial issues such as querying and storing XML efficiently.

This book is a must for all people interested in XML!

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a wonderful conection of the three concepts, June 1, 2000

By	"gzg" (Macau) - See all my reviews

The book provides a wonderful link of the three concepts: Relation, Semistructured , and XML. The discussion is clear and concise. We know that Relation is well used in modelling enterprise data today, since the high performance of RDBMS . On the other hand, XML is well accepted the most suitable for business information representation. The author uniformed them under the banner of semistructured data model. The text drives the readers into the insight of the data world even though it is in the abstract level. Anyone can be benifitted by reading it if he want to go deep in the XML and data world.