The Shades of Semi-structured Data
• XML - Chapter 30
• JSON
Outline
Structure of XML Data
XML Document Schema
Querying and Transformation
Application Program Interfaces to XML
JSON
Introduction
XML: Extensible Markup Language
Defined by the WWW Consortium (W3C)
Derived from SGML (Standard Generalized Markup
Language), but simpler to use than SGML
Documents have tags giving extra information about
sections of the document
E.g., <title> XML </title> <slide> Introduction …
</slide>
Extensible, unlike HTML
Users can add new tags, and separately specify
how the tag should be handled for display
XML Introduction (Cont.)
The ability to specify new tags, and to create nested tag structures
make XML a great way to exchange data, not just documents.
Much of the use of XML has been in data exchange applications,
not as a replacement for HTML
Tags make data (relatively) self-documenting
E.g.,
<university>
<department>
<dept_name> Comp. Sci. </dept_name>
<building> Taylor </building>
<budget> 100000 </budget>
</department>
<course>
<course_id> CS-101 </course_id>
<title> Intro. to Computer Science </title>
<dept_name> Comp. Sci </dept_name>
<credits> 4 </credits>
</course>
</university>
XML: Motivation
Data interchange is critical in today’s networked world
Examples:
Banking: funds transfer
Order processing (especially inter-company orders)
Scientific data
– Chemistry: ChemML, …
– Genetics: BSML (Bio-Sequence Markup Language),
…
Paper flow of information between organizations is being
replaced by electronic flow of information
Each application area has its own set of standards for
representing information
XML has become the basis for all new generation data
interchange formats
XML Motivation (Cont.)
Earlier generation formats were based on plain text with line headers
indicating the meaning of fields
Similar in concept to email headers
Does not allow for nested structures, no standard “type” language
Tied too closely to low level document structure (lines, spaces, etc)
Each XML based standard defines what are valid elements, using
XML type specification languages to specify the syntax
DTD (Document Type Descriptors)
XML Schema
Plus textual descriptions of the semantics
XML allows new tags to be defined as required
However, this may be constrained by DTDs
A wide variety of tools is available for parsing, browsing and querying
XML documents/data
Comparison with Relational Data
Inefficient: tags, which in effect represent schema
information, are repeated
Better than relational tuples as a data-exchange
format
Unlike relational tuples, XML data is self-
documenting due to presence of tags
Non-rigid format: tags can be added
Allows nested structures
Wide acceptance, not only in database systems,
but also in browsers, tools, and applications
Structure of XML Data
Tag: label for a section of data
Element: section of data beginning with <tagname>
and ending with matching </tagname>
Elements must be properly nested
Proper nesting
<course> … <title> …. </title> </course>
Improper nesting
<course> … <title> …. </course> </title>
Formally: every start tag must have a unique
matching end tag, that is in the context of the same
parent element.
Every document must have a single top-level element
Example of Nested Elements
<purchase_order>
<identifier> P-101 </identifier>
<purchaser> …. </purchaser>
<itemlist>
<item>
<identifier> RS1 </identifier>
<description> Atom powered rocket sled </description>
<quantity> 2 </quantity>
<price> 199.95 </price>
</item>
<item>
<identifier> SG2 </identifier>
<description> Superb glue </description>
<quantity> 1 </quantity>
<unit-of-measure> liter </unit-of-measure>
<price> 29.95 </price>
</item>
</itemlist>
</purchase_order>
Motivation for Nesting
Nesting of data is useful in data transfer
Example: elements representing item nested within an
itemlist element
Nesting is not supported, or discouraged, in relational
databases
With multiple orders, customer name and address are
stored redundantly
Normalization replaces nested structures in each order by
foreign key into table storing customer name and address
information
But nesting is appropriate when transferring data
External application does not have direct access to data
referenced by a foreign key
Structure of XML Data (Cont.)
Mixture of text with sub-elements is legal in XML.
• Example:
<course>
This course is being offered for the first time in 2009.
<course id> BIO-399 </course id>
<title> Computational Biology </title>
<dept name> Biology </dept name>
<credits> 3 </credits>
</course>
• Useful for document markup, but discouraged for data
representation
Attributes
Elements can have attributes
<course course_id= “CS-101”>
<title> Intro. to Computer Science</title>
<dept name> Comp. Sci. </dept name>
<credits> 4 </credits>
</course>
Attributes are specified by name=value pairs inside the
starting tag of an element
An element may have several attributes, but each attribute
name can only occur once
<course course_id = “CS-101” credits=“4”>
Attributes vs. Subelements
Distinction between subelement and attribute
In the context of documents, attributes are part of markup,
while subelement contents are part of the basic document
contents
In the context of data representation, the difference is
unclear and may be confusing
Same information can be represented in two ways
– <course course_id= “CS-101”> … </course>
– <course>
<course_id>CS-101</course_id> …
</course>
Suggestion: use attributes for identifiers of elements, and
use subelements for contents
More on XML Syntax
Elements without subelements or text content can be
abbreviated by ending the start tag with a /> and deleting
the end tag
<course course_id=“CS-101” Title=“Intro. To Computer
Science”
dept_name = “Comp. Sci.” credits=“4” />
To store string data that may contain tags, without the
tags being interpreted as subelements, use CDATA as
below
<![CDATA[<course> … </course>]]>
Here, <course> and </course> are treated as just strings
CDATA stands for “character data”
XML Document Schema
Database schemas constrain what information can be stored,
and the data types of stored values
XML documents are not required to have an associated
schema
However, schemas are very important for XML data exchange
Otherwise, a site cannot automatically interpret data
received from another site
Two mechanisms for specifying XML schema
Document Type Definition (DTD)
Widely used
XML Schema
Newer, increasing use
Document Type Definition (DTD)
The type of an XML document can be specified using a DTD
DTD constraints structure of XML data
What elements can occur
What attributes can/must an element have
What subelements can/must occur inside each element,
and how many times.
DTD does not constrain data types
All values represented as strings in XML
DTD syntax
<!ELEMENT element (subelements-specification) >
<!ATTLIST element (attributes) >
Element Specification in DTD
Subelements can be specified as
names of elements, or
#PCDATA (parsed character data), i.e., character strings
EMPTY (no subelements) or ANY (anything can be a subelement)
Example
<! ELEMENT department (dept_name building, budget)>
<! ELEMENT dept_name (#PCDATA)>
<! ELEMENT budget (#PCDATA)>
Subelement specification may have regular expressions
<!ELEMENT university ( ( department | course | instructor | teaches )
+)>
Notation:
– “|” - alternatives
– “+” - 1 or more occurrences
– “*” - 0 or more occurrences
University DTD
<!DOCTYPE university [
<!ELEMENT university ( (department|course|instructor|teaches)+)>
<!ELEMENT department ( dept name, building, budget)>
<!ELEMENT course ( course id, title, dept name, credits)>
<!ELEMENT instructor (IID, name, dept name, salary)>
<!ELEMENT teaches (IID, course id)>
<!ELEMENT dept name( #PCDATA )>
<!ELEMENT building( #PCDATA )>
<!ELEMENT budget( #PCDATA )>
<!ELEMENT course id ( #PCDATA )>
<!ELEMENT title ( #PCDATA )>
<!ELEMENT credits( #PCDATA )>
<!ELEMENT IID( #PCDATA )>
<!ELEMENT name( #PCDATA )>
<!ELEMENT salary( #PCDATA )>
]>
Attribute Specification in DTD
Attribute specification : for each attribute
• Name
• Type of attribute
CDATA
ID (identifier) or IDREF (ID reference) or IDREFS (multiple
IDREFs)
– more on this later
• Whether
mandatory (#REQUIRED)
has a default value (value),
or neither (#IMPLIED)
Examples
• <!ATTLIST course course_id CDATA #REQUIRED>, or
• <!ATTLIST course
course_id ID #REQUIRED
dept_name IDREF #REQUIRED
instructors IDREFS #IMPLIED >
IDs and IDREFs
An element can have at most one attribute of type ID
The ID attribute value of each element in an XML
document must be distinct
Thus the ID attribute value is an object identifier
An attribute of type IDREF must contain the ID value
of an element in the same document
An attribute of type IDREFS contains a set of (0 or
more) ID values. Each ID value must contain the ID
value of an element in the same document
University DTD with Attributes
University DTD with ID and IDREF attribute types.
<!DOCTYPE university-3 [
<!ELEMENT university ( (department|course|instructor)+)>
<!ELEMENT department ( building, budget )>
<!ATTLIST department
dept_name ID #REQUIRED >
<!ELEMENT course (title, credits )>
<!ATTLIST course
course_id ID #REQUIRED
dept_name IDREF #REQUIRED
instructors IDREFS #IMPLIED >
<!ELEMENT instructor ( name, salary )>
<!ATTLIST instructor
IID ID #REQUIRED
dept_name IDREF #REQUIRED >
· · · declarations for title, credits, building,
budget, name and salary · · ·
]>
XML data with ID and IDREF attributes
<university-3>
<department dept name=“Comp. Sci.”>
<building> Taylor </building>
<budget> 100000 </budget>
</department>
<department dept name=“Biology”>
<building> Watson </building>
<budget> 90000 </budget>
</department>
<course course id=“CS-101” dept name=“Comp. Sci”
instructors=“10101 83821”>
<title> Intro. to Computer Science </title>
<credits> 4 </credits>
</course>
….
<instructor IID=“10101” dept name=“Comp. Sci.”>
<name> Srinivasan </name>
<salary> 65000 </salary>
</instructor>
….
</university-3>
Limitations of DTDs
No typing of text elements and attributes
All values are strings, no integers, reals, etc.
Difficult to specify unordered sets of subelements
Order is usually irrelevant in databases (unlike in the
document-layout environment from which XML evolved)
(A | B)* allows specification of an unordered set, but
Cannot ensure that each of A and B occurs only once
IDs and IDREFs are untyped
The instructors attribute of an course may contain a
reference to another course, which is meaningless
instructors attribute should ideally be constrained to refer
to instructor elements
XML Schema
XML Schema is a more sophisticated schema language which addresses
the drawbacks of DTDs. Supports
Typing of values
E.g., integer, string, etc
Also, constraints on min/max values
User-defined, comlex types
Many more features, including
uniqueness and foreign key constraints, inheritance
XML Schema is itself specified in XML syntax, unlike DTDs
More-standard representation, but verbose
XML Scheme is integrated with namespaces
BUT: XML Schema is significantly more complicated than DTDs.
Querying and Transforming XML Data
Translation of information from one XML schema to another
Querying on XML data
Above two are closely related, and handled by the same tools
Standard XML querying/translation languages
XPath
Simple language consisting of path expressions
XSLT
Simple language designed for translation from XML to
XML and XML to HTML
XQuery
An XML query language with a rich set of features
Tree Model of XML Data
Query and transformation languages are based on a tree
model of XML data
An XML document is modeled as a tree, with nodes
corresponding to elements and attributes
Element nodes have child nodes, which can be attributes or
subelements
Text in an element is modeled as a text node child of the
element
Children of a node are ordered according to their order in
the XML document
Element and attribute nodes (except for the root node) have
a single parent, which is an element node
The root node has a single child, which is the root element
of the document
XQuery
XQuery is a general purpose query language for XML data
Currently being standardized by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C)
XQuery is derived from the Quilt query language, which itself
borrows from SQL, XQL and XML-QL
XQuery uses a
for … let … where … order by …result …
syntax
for SQL from
where SQL where
order by SQL order by
result SQL select
let allows temporary variables, and has no equivalent in
SQL
FLWOR Syntax in XQuery
For clause uses XPath expressions, and variable in for clause ranges over
values in the set returned by XPath
Simple FLWOR expression in XQuery
• find all courses with credits > 3, with each result enclosed in an
<course_id> .. </course_id> tag
for $x in /university-3/course
let $courseId := $x/@course_id
where $x/credits > 3
return <course_id> { $courseId } </course id>
• Items in the return clause are XML text unless enclosed in {}, in which
case they are evaluated
Let clause not really needed in this query. Query can be written as:
for $x in /university-3/course[credits > 3]
return <course_id> { $x/@course_id } </course_id>
Alternative notation for constructing elements:
return element course_id { element $x/@course_id }
Joins
Joins are specified in a manner very similar to SQL
for $c in /university/course,
$i in /university/instructor,
$t in /university/teaches
where $c/course_id= $t/course id and $t/IID = $i/IID
return <course_instructor> { $c $i } </course_instructor>
XSLT
A stylesheet stores formatting options for a document, usually separately
from document
E.g. an HTML style sheet may specify font colors and sizes for
headings, etc.
The XML Stylesheet Language (XSL) was originally designed for
generating HTML from XML
XSLT is a general-purpose transformation language
Can translate XML to XML, and XML to HTML
XSLT transformations are expressed using rules called templates
Templates combine selection using XPath with construction of results
Application Program Interface
There are two standard application program interfaces to XML data:
SAX (Simple API for XML)
Based on parser model, user provides event handlers for parsing
events
– E.g., start of element, end of element
DOM (Document Object Model)
XML data is parsed into a tree representation
Variety of functions provided for traversing the DOM tree
E.g.: Java DOM API provides Node class with methods
getParentNode( ), getFirstChild( ), getNextSibling( )
getAttribute( ), getData( ) (for text node)
getElementsByTagName( ), …
Also provides functions for updating DOM tree
Storage of XML in Relational Databases
Alternatives:
String Representation
Tree Representation
Map to relations
JSON
Data Interchange
The key idea in Ajax.
An alternative to page replacement.
Applications delivered as pages.
How should the data be delivered?
JSON
A Subset of ECMA-262 Third Edition.
Language Independent.
Text-based.
Light-weight.
Easy to parse.
JSON Is Not...
JSON is not a document format.
JSON is not a markup language.
JSON is not a general serialization format.
No cyclical/recurring structures.
No invisible structures.
No functions.
Values
Strings
Numbers
Booleans
Objects
Arrays
null
Value
value
string
number
objec t
array
true
false
null
Strings
Sequence of 0 or more Unicode characters
No separate character type
A character is represented as a string with a
length of 1
Wrapped in "double quotes"
Backslash escapement
String
string
Any UNICODE c harac ter exc ept
" "
" or \ or c ontrol c harac ter
quotation mark
\ "
reverse solidus
\
solidus
/
bac kspac e
b
formfeed
f
new line
n
c arriage return
r
horizontal tab
t
u 4 hexadec imal digits
Numbers
Integer
Real
Scientific
No octal or hex
No NaN or Infinity
Use null instead
Number
number
0 . digit
-
digit
e
1 - 9
digit E
+
digit
-
Booleans
true
false
null
A value that isn't anything
Object
Objects are unordered containers of key/value pairs
Objects are wrapped in { }
, separates key/value pairs
: separates keys and values
Keys are strings
Values are JSON values
struct, record, hashtable, object
Object
objec t
{ string : value }
,
Object
{"name":"Jack B. Nimble","at large":
true,"grade":"A","level":3, "format":
{"type":"rect","width":1920,
"height":1080,"interlace":false,
"framerate":24}}
Object
{
"name": "Jack B. Nimble",
"at large": true,
"grade": "A",
"format": {
"type": "rect",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080,
"interlace": false,
"framerate": 24
}
}
Array
Arrays are ordered sequences of values
Arrays are wrapped in []
, separates values
JSON does not talk about indexing.
An implementation can start array indexing at 0 or
1.
Array
array
[ value ]
,
Array
["Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday",
"Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday",
"Saturday"]
[
[0, -1, 0],
[1, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 1]
]
Arrays vs Objects
Use objects when the key names are arbitrary
strings.
Use arrays when the key names are sequential
integers.
Don't get confused by the term Associative Array.
JSON in Ajax
HTML Delivery.
JSON data is built into the page.
<html>...
<script>
var data = { ... JSONdata ... };
</script>...
</html>
JSON in Ajax
XMLHttpRequest
Obtain responseText
Parse the responseText
responseData = eval(
'(' + responseText + ')');
responseData =
[Link]();
Arguments against JSON
JSON Doesn't Have Namespaces.
JSON Has No Validator.
JSON Is Not Extensible.
JSON Is Not XML.
JSON Is Not XML
objects • element
arrays
• attribute
strings
• attribute string
numbers
booleans • content
null • <![CDATA[ ]]>
• entities
• declarations
• schema
• stylesheets
• comments
• version
• namespace
Data Interchange
JSON is a simple, common representation of data.
Communication between servers and browser
clients.
Communication between peers.
Language independent data interchange.
End of Chapter 30