Extension of XQuery for standardized XML-data.

The XML format is gaining a higher and higher interest for storage and exchange of data. The format offers a structuring of data, but also a flexibility and openness that makes it possible to represent everything from well-structured data to simple marking of text. New standards based on XML for representation of data are quickly emerging.

XQuery is the query language proposed for queries directly on data represented as XML. We have previously evaluated XQuery for standardized data within systems biology and our evaluations are very promising. There are however several features of our standardized data that can not efficiently be handled in XQuery today:

Queries across several standards, where the user today need to be well acquainted
with details of all the standards.

Queries where the values is fetched from definitions on ontologies. In this case it
is interesting with a comparison of values corresponding to the ISA links in the
hierarchy.

Queries over graph structure.

The thesis consist of investigate relevant literature and propose, implement and evaluate an extension of XQuery to handle one or several of these features. The aim is to build on an existing XQuery implementation and make the extensions as a set of additional functions available for the user.


Suitable background: Computer science, C, D or IT