Using XML to support media types

Abstract

The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) has drawn significant attention in research and practice of databases and web-based information systems. At the same time, lots of work has been investigated in conceptual modelling for web-based information systems which is at most loosely coupled with XML. One such research direction has led to the theory of media types, which has proven itself to be useful for the design and development of large and maintainable web-based information systems. The research reported in this article investigates how XML and the theory of media types could be brought together, i.e. how XML could be used to support media types. It turns out that some of the striking features of media types are not yet well supported by XML. Therefore, severals extensions to XML such as subelements, update operations, schema updates, views, media elements and adaptivity will be suggested in this article in order to close this gap.