On Maintaining XML Linking Integrity During Update

It is a fact that XML update has become more important with the rise of XML Database usage. How update operations affect XML documents needs to be investigated further. In this paper we propose a methodology to accommodate update without violating the XML document’s constraints. The constraints maintained are those that are defined using XML linking language: xlink and xpointer. This language, which is standardized by W3C, is used to provide referential purpose among XML documents or nodes. Since XML link is embedded as an attribute in an XML instance, our proposal can be used for schema-less documents and for instance-based reference. We propose a set of functions that perform checking mechanisms before updates. The proposed method can be implemented in various ways, and in this case we use XQuery language.