LoPiX: A System for XML Data Integration and Manipulation

LOPiX is an implementation of XPathLog [May01b], an XML/XPath-native, rule-based programming language for manipulation and integration of XML documents. The main syntactical constructs are XPath expressions, extended with variables. Due to the close relationship with XPath, the semantics of rules is easy to grasp. In contrast to other approaches, the XPath syntax and semantics is also used for a declarative specification how the database should be updated: when used in rule heads, XPath filters are interpreted as specifications of elements and properties which should be added to the database. The LoPiX system provides an implementation of XPathLog tailored to data integration, using a suitable graph-based data model. It extends the pure XPathLog language with schema information obtained from DTDs, a class concept, data-driven Web access and export functionality and data integration functionality [May01c] such as element fusion, synonyms, and tree view projections of the internal database. Binaries of LOPiX together with a detailed paper on XPathLog can be found at [LoP].