Temporal and multi-versioned XML documents: A survey

Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents are associated with time in two ways: (1) XML documents evolve over time and (2) XML documents contain temporal information. The efficient management of the temporal and multi-versioned XML documents requires optimized use of storage and efficient processing of complex historical queries. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the various schemes available to efficiently store and query the temporal and multi-versioned XML documents based on temporal, change management, versioning, and querying support. Firstly, the paper studies the multi-versioning control schemes to detect, manage, and query change in dynamic XML documents. Secondly, it describes the storage structures used to efficiently store and retrieve XML documents. Thirdly, it provides a comparative analysis of the various commercial tools based on change management, versioning, collaborative editing, and validation support. Finally, the paper presents some future research and development directions for the multi-versioned XML documents.