On utilizing variables for specifying FDs in data-centric XML documents

We are interested in specifying functional dependencies (FDs) for data-centric XML documents (XML documents that are used mainly for data storage). FDs are a natural constraint. Specifying FDs for XML documents is more difficult because unlike relational databases, XML documents do not have uniform structures. This paper introduces XML Template Functional Dependencies (XTFDs), which are able to specify FDs for XML documents. This paper also presents a necessary and sufficient condition for an XTFD to cause data redundancy in XML documents. Further, we propose Attribute Rule and Text String Rule as two procedures that can be repeatedly applied to remove redundancy caused by XTFDs. In addition, we prove that if an XML document has data redundancy with respect to an FD specified by using the tree tuple approach, it would have data redundancy with respect to an XTFD and show by example that XTFDs can specify some FDs for XML documents that the tree tuple approach cannot. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.