Typechecking for XML transformers

Tova Milo, Dan Suciu, Victor Vianu
2003 Journal of computer and system sciences (Print)  
We study the typechecking problem for XML (eXtensible Markup Language) transformers: given an XML transformation program and a DTD for the input XML documents, check whether every result of the program conforms to a specified output DTD. We model XML transformers using a novel device called a k-pebble transducer, that can express most queries without data-value joins in XML-QL, XSLT, and other XML query languages. Types are modeled by regular tree languages, a robust extension of DTDs. The main
more » ... result of the paper is that typechecking for k-pebble transducers is decidable. Consequently, typechecking can be performed for a broad range of XML transformation languages, including XML-QL and a fragment of XSLT. r 2003 Published by Elsevier Science (USA). 0022-0000/03/$ -see front matter r 2003 Published by Elsevier Science (USA). PII: S 0 0 2 2 -0 0 0 0 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 0 -2
doi:10.1016/s0022-0000(02)00030-2 fatcat:a2bxrrse3vf2pha25mrbwnaulu