xmlhack: XML, object, and relational schemas

Ron Bourret announced Mapping W3C Schemas to Object Schemas to Relational Schemas, a paper exploring techniques for mapping between these rather different structures.

The paper first explores possible bindings between XML Schema structures and object schemas, then maps object schemas to relational schemas. The mapping discussion takes place at the data modeling level, and is intended to:

"help people write code that can automatically generate object and database schemas from XML Schemas, as well as transferring data between XML documents, objects, and databases according to mappings between them."

Mapping data models is a complex process with many different angles of approach, opening many different possibilities for the same information. The paper expects developers to choose mapping strategies based on their needs:

"Because the set of possible mappings from XML Schemas to object schemas is fairly large, I do not expect any software to support all possible mappings any time soon, if ever. A more reasonable strategy is for the software to pick a subset of mappings that make sense for its uses and implement those."

Ron Bourret is an editor at xmlhack.