XML for End Users

Project Description

We are developing an XML query and transformation language that is particularly targeted at end users who have no formal training in databases or programming. The language is based on a document metaphor and allows simple selections in the style of "query-by-forms" as well as more sophisticated transformations that are expressed by so-called document rules. We are currently developing a graphical user interface to aid the construction of queries. We also investigate the automatic generation of XML transformations to help users to integrate different XML data sources.

Selected Publications

Toward the Automatic Derivation of XML Transformations, Martin Erwig
1st Int. Workshop on XML Schema and Data Management, 2003, to appear in LNCS

FoXQ - XQuery by Forms, Robin Abraham
Position Paper, Graduate Student Event at 3rd IEEE Int. Symp. on Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments, 2003

Xing: A Visual XML Query Language, Martin Erwig
Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, Vol. 14, No. 1, 5-45, 2003

XML Queries and Transformations for End Users, Martin Erwig
XML 2000, 259-269, 2000

A Visual Language for XML, Martin Erwig
16th IEEE Symp. on Visual Languages, 47-54, 2000

Software

Installation:

• Download FoXQ.tar.gz
• Gunzip and unpack the archive
• Start the query interface by entering the command run (or run.bat on Windows).

Usage:

• Click on the XML Data button on the left panel to pick the XML data source URL.
• In the popup window, enter the URL of the data source you want to query. You can use any XML file you like. One example file is located at http://www.cs.orst.edu/~abraharo/bib.xml. Click the OK button.
• In the folder panel that pops up, click on the name field at the top and enter: bib
  This should be the name of the ourtermost XML element in the XML data source.
• Click on the folder panel to select it (a red boundary appears around objects that are selected).
• Click on the Card button on the panel on the left to add a card to the folder.
• Click on the card-name area on the card and enter: book
  This is to specify that you are looking for information on the book elements in the database.
• Click on the Run Query button on the FoXQ interface and the Result-Viewer interface comes up with all the information on all the books stored in the bibliography database.
• For more information, see the README and INSTALL files that are included in the distribution.

Participating Researchers