Ozone: Integrating Structured and Semistructured Data

Abstract

Applications have an increasing need to manage semistructured data (such as data encoded in XML) along with conventional structured data. We extend the structured object database model ODMG and its query language OQL with the ability to handle semistructured data based on the OEM model and Lorel language, and we implement our extensions in a system called Ozone. In our approach, structured data may contain entry points to semistructured data, and vice-versa. The unified representation and querying of such ``hybrid'' data is the main contribution of our work. We retain strong typing and access to all properties of structured portions of the data while allowing flexible navigation of semistructured data without requiring full knowledge of structure. Ozone also enhances both ODMG/OQL and OEM/Lorel by virtue of their combination. For instance, Ozone allows OEM semantics to be applied to ODMG data, thus supporting semistructured-style navigation of structured data. Ozone also enables ODMG views of OEM data, allowing standard ODMG applications to access semistructured data without losing the benefits of structure. Ozone is implemented on top of the ODMG-compliant O2 database system, and it fully supports our extensions to the ODMG model and OQL.