Efficient XML query and update processing using a novel prime-based middle fraction labeling scheme

XML data can be represented by a tree or graph and the query processing for XML data requires the structural information among nodes. Designing an efficient labeling scheme for the nodes of Order-Sensitive XML trees is one of the important methods to obtain the excellent management of XML data. Previous labeling schemes such as region and prefix often sacrifice updating performance and suffer increasing labeling space when inserting new nodes. To overcome these limitations, in this paper we propose a new labeling idea of separating structure from order. According to the proposed idea, a novel Prime-based Middle Fraction Labeling Scheme (PMFLS) is designed accordingly, in which a series of algorithms are proposed to obtain the structural relationships among nodes and to support updates. PMFLS combines the advantages of both prefix and region schemes in which the structural information and sequential information are separately expressed. PMFLS also supports Order-Sensitive updates without relabeling or recalculation, and its labeling space is stable. Experiments and analysis on several benchmarks are conducted and the results show that PMFLS is efficient in handling updates and also significantly improves the performance of the query processing with good scalability.