Tree pattern matching in heterogeneous fuzzy XML databases

Dealing with heterogeneous data underlying fuzzy XML databases is challenging for any task of document management and knowledge discovery, since the structural heterogeneity and uncertainty of the large number of XML data sources make it difficult to effectively answer the structured query, especially the tree-pattern query. To address this issue, we propose a novel framework for managing fuzzy XML queries in a heterogeneous environment in this paper. In particular, we devise a holistic algorithm for matching tree-patterns over heterogeneous fuzzy XML data. Our approach adopts a compact stack technique and generates the matches by one scan on the relevant data associated with the tree-pattern, which eliminates re-scanning unnecessary portions of XML documents and redundant intermediate results. Finally, a comprehensive experimental evaluation conducted on real and synthetic data sets is carried out to show the significance of our approach as a solution for querying heterogeneous data in fuzzy XML documents.