Characterization of XML Functional Dependencies and their Interaction with DTDs

Abstract

With the rise of XML as a standard model of data exchange, XML functional dependencies (XFDs) have become important to areas such as key analysis, document normalization, and data integrity. XFDs are more complicated than relational functional dependencies because the set of XFDs satisfied by an XML document depends not only on the document values, but also the tree structure and corresponding DTD. In particular, constraints imposed by DTDs may alter the implications from a base set of XFDs, and may even be inconsistent with a set of XFDs. In this paper we examine the interaction between XFDs and DTDs. We present a sound and complete axiomatization for XFDs, both alone and in the presence of certain classes of DTDs. We show that these DTD classes form an axiomatic hierarchy, with the axioms at each level a proper superset of the previous. Furthermore, we show that consistency checking with respect to a set of XFDs is feasible for these same classes.