The two previous columns in this space dealt with a cookbook approach to database development. This month I hope to provide enough information for you to decide whether to learn Object-Role Modeling (ORM), the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

January 01, 2002
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/database-developer-modeling-metadata-an/184413973

The chart represents an ORM conceptual model for a memo-style document. The model can be used to generate a database schema for storing documents.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<MESGMEMO STATUS="PUBLIC">
<DATESENT>27 March 1999</DATESENT>
<RECIPIENT>Cathy Mugford</RECIPIENT>
<SENDER>Ken North</SENDER>
<TOPIC>Recommended Reading List: Web Farming for the Data Warehouse</TOPIC>
<SECTION>
<P>
Web Farming for the Data Warehouse (Morgan Kaufmann) is a compendium of 
information that is best-described as systematically making intelligent use of 
the Web. 
...
</P>
<P>
The book contains a wealth of information about content-providers, protocols,
standards, tools, discovery services, knowledge management, Web agents, and 
data mining software.  
...
</P>
<P>
Hackathorn's book is as close to leisure reading as I expect to find in an IT 
book. It belongs on the must-read list of anyone having an interest in 
exploring the Web's potential as an information resource.
</P>
</SECTION>
<CLOSE>Ken</CLOSE>
</MESGMEMO>

Modeling, Metadata, and XML

By Ken North

The two previous columns in this space dealt with a cookbook approach to database development. This month I hope to provide enough information for you to decide whether to learn Object-Role Modeling (ORM), the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). UML and ORM are obviously modeling technologies, but where does XML fit into the picture? Why did I include XML with two obvious modeling technologies? XML is more than a document markup language -- it's a solution for content modeling and creating standards for content.

Developers have been building information systems or information engineering models for several decades. The first generations of modeling tools and technologies centered on process and data modeling. System-level flow charts are early examples of process modeling, whereas Natural Language Information Analysis Method (NIAM) and data flow diagrams (DFD) were early data-modeling techniques. More recent modeling technologies support object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD). Data modeling is the process of creating models when designing databases, typically following a progression from conceptual model to logical model to physical schema. Most data-modeling products support entity-relationship diagrams (ERD), object-role modeling (ORM), and Integration Definition for Information Modeling (IDEF1X) models.

Figure 1 is an ORM conceptual model of a memorandum modeled with Visio Enterprise 5.0. Developers working on the database tier of an application start with conceptual modeling when designing database schemas and generating SQL Data Definition Language (DDL) statements. In my next column, we'll explore this model as the source for a database schema.

Developers working on other tiers of an application use object modeling tools to design components or classes used by applications. The most popular tools for modeling application objects support the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Whether creating databases or application objects, modeling lets you apply formal techniques, including design-time validation, before you build a physical database or application objects. For a rigorous design, software professionals might use ORM for databases and UML for components.

The Value of Modeling

Why model? The short answer is quality. Developers face a challenge when developing complex databases or applications having many objects. For example, if you're building an e-commerce Web site, you're likely to create models that include objects such as customers, orders, payments, shipments, invoices, and so on. As you add more functionality to your Web applications, you add more complexity to databases and software. Decades of software quality-assurance research have revealed certain axioms. A major finding was that most application flaws and bugs are the result of a deficient design. Studies have shown that the expense of correcting errors increases as a project progresses through the development and deployment cycle. In other words, it is less expensive to correct an error during design than during coding, testing, or deployment. The message for developers is: design, design, design. The Federal Aviation Administration's highly touted Bandwidth Information System used a design phase whose duration was about 50 percent of the project schedule.

XML promises to be a major influence on software quality. Developers today can use object models, database models, and standard components. As XML gains momentum, developers will also use document type definitions (DTDs) as the content model for standard inputs and outputs. Every generation of developers has its magic silver bullets -- technologies that will solve all of our software problems. Java and XML have attained that status, in part because of the zeal of Web developers who favor vendor-neutral software technologies. Java and XML are not a panacea, but they do promise to simplify development using standard components. They're important ingredients in a recipe that should include formal development methods such as modeling. Because of space limitations, I'll discuss XML here and cover data modeling and object modeling in a subsequent column.

Describing Content, Describing Data

The industry is devoting a lot of energy to describing data, modeling information, and developing standards for metadata. The interest in XML is exploding and the largest software companies are in a race to provide XML-enabled products. There is a flurry of activity to develop DTDs for use with XML-enabled software.

XML lets you model content that ranges from book-oriented document types to commercial transactions. It's an enabling technology for business-to-business integration, data interchange, e-commerce, and the creation of application-specific vocabularies. Database developers are particularly interested in XML as a building block for creating middle-tier servers that integrate data from disparate databases. XML is also used for purposes such as exchanging data warehouse metadata and UML models. Organizations such as IBM, Oracle, Rational, Sybase, and Unisys are promoting XML, UML, and the Meta Object Facility (MOF) as solutions for collaborative development using an open information interchange model. MOF is an Object Management Group (OMG) standard for distributed repositories and metadata management. The marriage of XML, UML, and MOF produced the XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) specification.

E-Commerce Is Driving Content Standards

The growth projections for e-commerce are believable when you consider the flurry of development and standards activity, as well as the number of organizations building e-commerce infrastructures. There is a potential for business opportunities if you comply with e-commerce standards, and a potential for lost business if you don't. Plugging into the government's e-commerce network should streamline business processes and reduce the cost of doing business with the government. Not developing XML expertise means you will be unable to fulfill documentation requirements or cut costs with e-transactions. There is other evidence of the importance of e-transactions and XML capabilities. The Debt Collection Improvement Act (DCIA) requires, as of January 2, 1999, that payments by the U.S. government (except tax refunds) be made by electronic funds transfer. In April 1999, the state of Utah adopted XML documents as a standard for court filings. One of your requirements will be delivering technical documents that conform to standard DTDs.

The BizTalk initiative is another reason for organizations to become familiar with DTDs and XML. BizTalk is a Microsoft effort to create a new XML-based commerce architecture. Microsoft and its partners are developing standard e-commerce DTDs that support activities such as exchanging catalogs and corporate purchasing over the Internet. The partners include 1-800-FLOWERS, Active Software, barnesandnoble.com, Claris, Commerce One, Dell Computer, Eddie Bauer, Harbinger Corporation, J.D. Edwards & Company, Level 8 Systems, MasterCard International, Oberon Software, PeopleSoft, SAP AG, and Sharp Electronics Corporation.

Because XML and Java are inexorably linked as "hot" Web technologies, there's a lot of Java code being written to produce or consume XML. For example, companies (Data Channel, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun) and individuals (James Clark, Tim Bray) have already published XML parsers written in Java. Sun announced Java Project X, a technology preview that supports XML with Java classes. According to Bill Roth, program manager for Enterprise JavaBeans, the next release of EJB will use XML for deployment descriptors and versioning information. IBM is making a huge investment in XML and Java, and its XML4J parser is one of the best available. Not to be outdone in the XML department, Microsoft previewed XML support in Office 2000 and Internet Explorer 5.0.

What Does XML Let Us Model?

XML lets developers design application-specific vocabularies. Its popularity is based in part on human readability and ease of understanding.

Listing One is the XML counterpart to the ORM model of

Figure 1. XML enables you to describe structure, but it doesn't define presentation rules

Some people see XML as document-processing technology, but it's also a powerful tool for database projects. A visual designer thinks of XML in terms of client-side issues such as presentation and style sheets. A database developer is more likely to be concerned with middle-tier data integration and schemas. To effectively use XML, a database developer needs to understand its structure and how to store it, parse it, manipulate it, and generate XML output from database queries.

XML defines content standards through the use of industry-accepted DTDs, although the DTD is optional in XML documents. The DTD defines rules and structure for a class of documents. You can use the DTD, for example, to define tags that are required in a document. You can model a document's structure by using tags that define document elements, entities, and attributes. Entities represent a document's physical structure and elements represent its logical structure. Attribute lists are used to specify element metadata, such as unique identifiers.

XML documents contain information that conforms to a tree structure. A simple XML parser checks a document to see if it's syntactically correct, and a validating parser verifies that it's semantically correct (that it conforms to the DTD). You'll find a number of free XML parsers on the Web written in Java, C, and C++. The W3C has developed a Document Object Model (DOM) that abstracts and layers objects over the XML document structure. The DOM lets a developer program with standard objects while manipulating XML data trees.

Schemas, XML-Data, RDF, DCD

There are several initiatives related to XML schemas. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) provides the ability to describe Web resources. An RDF schema is similar to a database schema. It defines types and document semantics, which makes it possible to do type checking of XML documents. Schemas also make it easier to build query processors. Dr. Neel Sundaresan of IBM Almaden Research Center has coauthored a W3C proposal for an RDF Query Language.

The Document Content Description (DCD) specification describes a solution for creating structural schemas or document content format descriptions. DCD lets you define rules that describe the content and structure of XML documents. DCDs supplement DTD semantics by describing constraints in XML and defining document elements as types. DCD constraints include subclassing and inheritance, data types, and SQL-style constraints (key fields, unique values, referential integrity). XML-Data is an XML vocabulary for defining and documenting object classes. It can be used to define the characteristics of syntactic classes, or for conceptual schemas that are similar to relational schemas. XML-Data schemas include element type declarations. They support subtypes, groups (ordered sequences of elements), defaults, aliases, class hierarchies, multipart keys, and one-to-many relations.

Queries, Events, Linking

One of the reasons for defining XML schemas is to let software developers build sophisticated tools for querying XML data stores. XSL contains sophisticated pattern-matching functions, but it doesn't provide create, update, and delete operations that are analogous to SQL queries. When calling for input on query processing for XML, the W3C received dozens of position papers.

Developers writing software such as Windows applications or Enterprise JavaBeans write code that uses an event-processing model. When writing a typical Windows application, for example, you provide event handlers for different Windows messages. The XML standard doesn't define events, but David Megginson developed the Simple API for XML (SAX), a solution that lets Java programmers associate event handlers with tags. XLink is an XML linking language specification being reviewed by the W3C. XML supports external file references but it currently doesn't include predefined element types (such as <IMG>) that define a hypertext-style link. Today you can use XML to create content tags (<para> or <city>) but there is no way to identify hypertext link semantics for those elements. XLink is a proposal for extending XML with features such as bidirectional links. XLink reserves attribute names, such as xml:link, to signal a hypertext link.

XPointer is a spec for an abstract language used for specifying locations in documents.

<A HREF="http://www.xyz.com#ID (foo)CHILD(4,SEC)CHILD(1, ABSTRACT)">

XLink and XPointer are works in progress but some developers have implemented software based on the working drafts (see "

Online").

Databases, Tree-Structured Data

Database developers are likely to be involved with XML for several reasons. You might develop applications that query databases and format the query results as XML documents. You might have to develop databases and write code to support business-to-business integration or other forms of electronic data interchange (EDI). You might also have to store XML documents in a database. Today's object-relational DBMS products from Oracle, Informix, and IBM support text databases and sophisticated text searching. It's no surprise they are developing XML-centric extensions to their product lines.

Some XML advocates have asserted that XML and databases are divergent technologies. This assertion is based in part on an erroneous assumption that a DBMS can manage row and column data, but not tree-structured data. Database veterans recognize that hierarchical and Conference on Data Systems Languages (CODASYL) model databases have no problem with hierarchies or trees. Those are legacy technologies, but object and object-relational databases also store text data and operate with tree structures.

SQL-92 also offers solutions for tree-structured data, as discussed in Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties (Morgan Kaufmann). Parts explosions and bill of materials processors (BOMP) are examples of applications where developers use SQL with inherently hierarchical data. In the late 1980s, Dutch researchers used NIAM to create a conceptual model and Oracle document database that was the semantic equivalent of SGML. The basic process of designing SQL databases often involves decomposing an object or entities into its constituent parts. To store an XML document in a SQL database, you can follow that paradigm, although some products can store the document as a single column.

Oracle has built support for XML into products such as Oracle Application Server 4.0. and Oracle 8I (O8i), an object-relational DBMS capable of storing rich data types. O8i includes an XML parser, an Internet File System (iFS) that provides automatic parsing of XML documents, and Java classes that support XML. Oracle's parser supports the Document Object Model and the event-based SAX interface. Oracle's interMedia text search engine provides section searching of XML documents.

IBM is adding an XML toolkit to its WebSphere (application server) studio product and adding XML capabilities to DB2 Universal Database (UDB). It is developing an XML Extender for DB2 UDB and adding features for storing and querying XML documents. It can store XML documents as a single column, or decompose the document and treat it as a collection of fields that are standard or user-defined types (UDTs). IBM is revising the DB2 text search engine so it understands the structure of an XML document, thereby providing capabilities such as section searches. By storing XML elements and attributes as SQL types, DB2 users will be able to index documents for more powerful search optimizations. IBM is also adding functions to extract XML elements, attributes, or entire documents, to reconstruct decomposed documents, and to link to XML documents stored in external files.

Microsoft is making a heavy commitment to XML. Office 2000 saves files as native HTML and includes embedded XML within Office documents. Internet Explorer 5.0 (IE5) can read XML tags embedded in a Web page and perform semantic validation using DTDs. Microsoft implements the W3C DOM over a Component Object Model (COM) component. Developers can use the XML COM component for client- or server-side programming. The XML component calls the parser (processor) to check a file for validity, builds the document tree in memory, and then builds the object model over the tree. This programmatic interface enables VBScript, JScript, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and Active Server Pages (ASP) to operate with XML. A script can, for example, create an XML data source object (XMLDSO) and then use DOM objects to walk an XML tree. ADO has been extended to work with XML as shaped or hierarchical recordsets. Users can bind data islands to Web pages and then use XML objects or ADO methods to navigate through the data.

Understanding the Example Model

In the example conceptual model in

Figure 1, the primary object is an email message, interoffice memo, or similar communiqu. This corresponds to the ELEMENT tag in an XML/SGML DTD. Look for more information in future columns. Content modeling, object modeling, and data modeling are useful technologies that contribute to rigorous design and development activities. They promote component reuse and make it possible to use a cookbook approach to developing systems. In this article, we've touched on content modeling with XML and data modeling with ORM. In the next issue we'll continue this discussion in more detail and see how they relate to object modeling with UML.

 

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Ken consults and teaches Expert Series seminars. He is the author of Database Magic with Ken North (Prentice Hall) and Windows-Multi-DBMS Programming (Wiley). He can be reached at [email protected].

Comparing RDF-Schema and UML
www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-rdf-uml

Comparison of Data Modeling Techniques
essentialstrategies.com/documents/comparison.pdf

GUIDE Business Rules Project Report
www.guide.org/ap/apbrall.htm

GUIDE Business Rules Project Report (Adobe PDF)
www.guide.org/ap/apbrules.pdf

Microsoft XML Site
www.microsoft.com/xml

STEP tools
www.steptools.com/projects/niiip

Query Languages proposed for XML
www.w3.org/TandS/QL/QL98/pp.html

Visio templates for HP Fusion
www.hpl.hp.com/fusion/mf_visio.html

W3C Metadata Project
www.w3.org/Metadata/Activity

XMI
www.oasis-open.org/cover/xml.html

XPointer and XLink implementations
www.stg.brown.edu/~sjd/XML-Linking/xptr-implementations.html

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