XML queries and constraints, containment and reformulation

Starting from the XQuery language we define XBind, an XML analog of relational conjunctive queries as well as a related class of XML integrity constraints (dependencies).We identify a fragment of XBind for which containment is decidable, in fact p2 -complete, and a further fragment for which containment is NP-complete. We extend the containment algorithm to take XML dependencies into account. We give an algorithm for the reformulation of XBind queries under combinations of GAV and LAVXQuery views, as well as additional dependencies.We prove a completeness theoremwhich guarantees that under certain conditions, our algorithmwill find a minimal reformulation if one exists. Moreover, we identify conditions when this algorithm achieves optimal complexity bounds. Our results on containment and reformulation depend on certain restrictions on the query and constraint languages. We calibrate the results by showing that lifting these restrictions significantly changes the complexity of the problems. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.