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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 2687–2692Cite as

Path Query

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Synonyms

Document path query

Definition

Given a semi-structured data set D, a path query identifies nodes of interest by specifying the path lead to the nodes and the predicates associated with nodes along the path. The path is identified by specifying the labels of the nodes to be navigated and structural relationship (parent-child or ancestor-descendant) among the nodes. A predicate can be a path query itself, relative to the node that it is associated with.

Historical Background

Using path information in query processing has been studied in the object-oriented database systems, in which most queries require the traversing from one object to another following object identifiers, in the mid 1990s. The notion of path query, in which the path and predicates along the path are specified as the core of the query, became popular with the growth of the information on the web and the introduction of semi-structured data, especially XML.

Most of the popular query languages for querying XML...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Yuqing Wu

Authors
  1. Yuqing Wu
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Correspondence to Yuqing Wu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, Univ. of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Frank Tompa

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Wu, Y. (2018). Path Query. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_140

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