• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.13D no.5 s.108
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• pp.641-650
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• 2006

XML has the characteristics of self-describing and uses DTD or XML schema in order to constraint its structure. Even though the XML schema is only at the stage of recommendation yet, it will be prevalently used because DTD is not itself XML and has the limitation on the expression power. The structure defined by the XML schema as well as the data of the XML documents can vary due to complex reasons. Those reasons are errors in the XML schema design, new requirements due to new applications, etc. Thus, we propose XML schema evolution operators that are extracted from the analysis of the XML schema updates. These schema evolution operators enable the XML schema updates that would have been impossible without supporting tools if there are a large number of XML documents complying the U schema. In addition, these operators includes the function of automatically finding the update place in the XML documents which are registered to the XSE system, and maintaining the XML documents valid to the XML schema rather than merely well-formed. This paper is the first attempt to update XML schemas of the XML documents and provides the comprehensive set of schema updating operations. Our work is necessary for the XML application development and maintenance in that it helps to update the structure of the XML documents as well as the data in the easy and precise manner.