MPI: A Practical Index Scheme for XML Data in Object Databases

MPI: A Practical Index Scheme for XML Data in Object Databases

In order to access XML data stored in object databases, an efficient index scheme is inevitable. There have been several index schemes that can be used to efficiently retrieve XML data stored In object databases, but they are all the single path indexes that support indexing along a single schema path. Henee, if a query contains an extended path which is denoted by wild character ('*'), a query processor has to examine multiple index objects, resulting in poor performance and inconsistent index management. In this paper, we propose MPI (Multi-Path Index) scheme as a new index scheme that provides the functionality of multiple path indexes more efficiently, while it uses only one index structure. The proposed scheme is easy to manage since it considers the extended path as a logically single schema path. It is also practical since it can be implemented by little modification of the B -tree index structure.