Decoupled common annotations for reusing XML document composition logic

Abstract

XML is emerging as a popular data format for business process integration. To achieve interoperability, XML documents must also conform to predefined Data Type Definitions (DTDs). However, most business data are not maintained as XML documents, and are stored in various native formats. Hence, a middleware is needed to dynamically extract XML documents from various data sources. XML Access Server (XAS) is a middleware that gives the appearance of a system maintaining a large set of DTD-conforming XML documents while retaining data in the underlying heterogeneous formats. However, industrial standard DTDs can be large, comprehensive, and yet similar. The lack of reuse and sharing of existing Document Composition Logic (DCL) can be costly in both development time and storage. In this paper, we present a decoupled common annotation method for reusing the DCLs. As individual DTDs under the same standard tend to share common elements, the reuse and sharing of DCLs not only save storage but also facilitate rapid creation of new mapping logic.