ISOLATION FOR APPLICATIONS WORKING ON SHARED XML DATA

• US 20130318109A1
• Filed: 07/29/2013
• Published: 11/28/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/25/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Tarachandani, Asha, Chandrasekar, Sivasankaran, Tam, Man-Hay, Tran, Anh-Tuan, Murthy, Ravi, Agarwal, Nipun, Sedlar, Eric
• Granted Patent: US 8,930,348 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/755
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/80 of semi-structured data, e.g. markup language structured data such as SGML, XML or HTML content-based retrieval of web data G06F16/95
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/131 Fragmentation of text files, e.g. creating reusable text-blocks; Linking to fragments, e.g. using XInclude; Namespaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/143 Markup, e.g. Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML] or Document Type Definition [DTD]

Abstract

A mechanism is provided for detecting and disregarding application specific nodes contained in shared XML documents. The techniques described involve determining one or more application specific nodes within XML documents and performing path expression evaluations of the XML documents as if the nodes are not present. In one embodiment, a mechanism is provided by which a user may specify the criterion that determine which subset of node in XML documents are to be ignored from path expression evaluations and evaluating a query that specifies a path operation based on a path and ignoring said identified nodes when evaluating said path operation.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving one or more criteria that identifies nodes within one or more XML documents to exclude from query evaluation;

based on the one or more criteria, generating a representation of the one or more XML documents that excludes the identified nodes;

receiving a query that specifies a path operation based on a path, wherein one or more of said identified nodes is under said path in the one or more XML documents; and

using the representation to compute the path operation as if the one or more of said identified nodes is not in the one or more XML documents;

wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein generating the representation of the one or more XML documents comprises:

parsing the one or more XML documents; and

excluding one or more nodes within the one or more XML documents from the representation wherein the one or more nodes within the one or more XML documents is identified by the one or more criteria.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation is an index of the one or more XML documents, and wherein the one or more computing devices access the index to compute the path operation.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation is stored in memory of a database server that is operating on the one or more computing devices.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more criteria identifies one or more tags within the one or more XML documents.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more criteria identifies a namespace within the one or more XML documents.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more XML documents is maintained by a database system that supports different criteria for different applications.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more XML documents includes documents stored in at least one of a BLOB, CLOB, or object-relational structure.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving the one or more criteria for a first application;

wherein the query is received from the first application;

receiving, from a second application, one or more operations to perform on the one or more XML documents; and

processing the one or more operations without excluding the nodes identified by the one or more criteria.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the query is received from a particular application, and wherein the criteria is received and the representation is generated for the particular application before receiving the query.

11. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions which, when executed, cause:

receiving one or more criteria that identifies nodes within one or more XML documents to exclude from query evaluation;

based on the one or more criteria, generating a representation of the one or more XML documents that excludes the identified nodes;

receiving a query that specifies a path operation based on a path, wherein one or more of said identified nodes is under said path in the one or more XML documents; and

using the representation to compute the path operation as if the one or more of said identified nodes is not in the one or more XML documents.

12. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the instructions, when executed, cause generating the representation of the one or more XML documents at least in part by:

parsing the one or more XML documents; and

excluding one or more nodes within the one or more XML documents from the representation wherein the one or more nodes within the one or more XML documents is identified by the one or more criteria.

13. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the representation is an index of the one or more XML documents, and wherein the instructions, when executed, cause one or more computing devices to access the index when computing the path operation.

14. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the representation is stored in memory of a database server that is operating on one or more computing devices.

15. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the one or more criteria identifies one or more tags within the one or more XML documents.

16. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the one or more criteria identifies a namespace within the one or more XML documents.

17. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the one or more XML documents is maintained by a database system that supports different criteria for different applications.

18. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the one or more XML documents includes documents stored in at least one of a BLOB, CLOB, or object-relational structure.

19. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, further comprising:

receiving the one or more criteria for a first application;

wherein the query is received from the first application;

receiving, from a second application, one or more operations to perform on the one or more XML documents; and

processing the one or more operations without excluding the nodes identified by the one or more criteria.

20. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the query is received from a particular application, and wherein the criteria is received and the representation is generated for the particular application before receiving the query.