A workload-aware approach for optimizing the XML schema design trade-off

In general, the design of XML schemas involves translating conceptual schemas into XML schemas which aim to be: (i) normalized schemas, and (ii) connected structures in order to achieve good performance on queries. However, these requirements address a trade-off because highly connected XML structures allow data redundancy, and normalized schemas generate disconnected XML structures. This paper describes a workload-based approach which balances this trade-off on translating conceptual schemas into XML structures. An experimental study on an XML database shows that our XML schemas provide high query performance on the relevant elements for the workload and, at the same time, low cost of data redundancy on elements that are not relevant for update operations.