Capturing Data Using XML Paragraph-centric Documents

Nowadays, graphical forms are used to capture input data and feed traditional databases. They are associated with rigid schema and constraints to ensure data validity and to control entry sequencce. Over the Internet, electronic documents are becoming widely exchanged and their data reused in a large range of tasks. As a direct consequence, a capture interface that relies on documents can serve as a flexible front-end, and as a natural way to capture data. The aim of our research is the development of a comprehensive capturing and mapping data system that ensures flexible and welladapted information capture and at the same time efficient information retrieval. This system introduces a transformation process that allows the mapping between the document model and the traditional database model. We validate our transformation frame-work by implementing a prototype. The primary release of the prototype is subject to a substantial attention.