RE: XML transformation with changed XSD

Udo,

A long time ago, I have published a somewhat naïve paper [1] on that topic. Essentially, I tried to get started with an operator suite that models stepwise transformations of schemas (I used DTDs back then), while these schema transformations were systematically completed into document transformations. (I am certainly not the only one that has done some thinking going into this direction.) This approach was inspired by the wonderful notion of database schema evolution with associated instance mapping, something that has further inspired me to introduce a generalized notion of coupled transformations recently [2]. I annotate the paper [1] with "naïve" because we never really applied this idea to a major evolutionary case study, and we never worked out the details to really make this scale; we did not even formalize the few silly operators that we came up with. Also, one would perhaps indeed want to put a GUI on top of such transformation language. What I am missing in contemporary tools (as mentioned by M. Kay), is a solid foundation on a transformational approach, as sketched in my naïve paper -- ideally something that makes useful reuse of grammar technology and general program transformation science. There is one piece of at least academic commitment I see on the subject of schema evolution, and that is about type-indexed datatypes, as carried out by the Generic Haskell folks in Utrecht and Bonn.

Regards,
Ralf Laemmel
Microsoft, Webdata/XML, Redmond

[1] http://homepages.cwi.nl/~ralf/retis01/
[2] http://homepages.cwi.nl/~ralf/CoupledSoftwareTransformations/


> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmlschema-dev-request@w3.org [mailto:xmlschema-dev-request@w3.org]
> On Behalf Of Udo Ende
> Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 1:03 AM
> To: Xmlschema-Dev-Request
> Subject: XML transformation with changed XSD
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have a set of XML files being (correctly) validated to a XSD file. Now I
> upgrade the XSD file and therefore I have to change the XML files.
> 
> What is the best way to automate the transformation of the XML files? Are
> there any tools that can do that?
> 
> --
> Udo Ende
> Dipl.-Math. Univ.
> Software Engineer
> 
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