Query Processing and Optimization for Regular Path Expressions

Guoren Wang, Mengchi Liu

Abstract: Regular path expression is one of the core components of XML query languages, and several approaches to evaluating regular path expressions have been proposed. In this paper, a new path expression evaluation approach, extent join, is proposed to compute both parent-children (‘/’) and ancestor-descendent (‘//’) connectors between path steps. Furthermore, two path expression optimization rules, path-shortening and path-complementing, are proposed. The former reduces the number of joins by shortening the path while the latter optimizes the execution of a path by using an equivalent complementary path expression to compute the original path. Experimental results show that the algorithms proposed in this paper are much more efficient than conventional ones.