A Unified Design Methodology using UML Classes for XML Application based on RDB

Nowadays the information exchange based on XML such as B2B electronic commerce is spreading. Therefore a systematic and stable management mechanism for storing the exchanged information is needed. For this goal there are many research activities for concerning the connection between XML application and relational databases. But because XML data has hierarchical structure and relational databases can store only flat-structured data, we need to make a conversion rule which changes the hierarchical architecture to a 2-dimensional format. Accordingly the modeling methodology for storing such structured information in relational databases is needed. In order to build good quality application systems, modeling is an important first step. In 1997, the OMG adopted the UML as its standard modeling language. Since industry has warmly embraced UML, its popularity should become more important in the future. So a design methodology based on UML is needed to develop efficient XML applications. In this paper, we propose a unified design methodology for XML applications based on relational database using UML. To reach these goals, first we introduce a XML modeling methodology to design W3C XML schema using UML and second we propose data modeling methodology for relational database schema to store XML data efficiently in relational databases.