Transforming Object-Oriented Databases into XML

This paper presents a novel approach to transform an existing object-oriented database into XML. The major motivation to carry out this study is the fact that it is necessary to facilitate platform independent exchange of the content of object oriented databases. There are more common features between the object-oriented model and XML and thus the mapping from object-oriented databases into XML is less problematic. To achieve the mapping, what we call the object graph is derived based on characteristics of the object-oriented schema; it simply summarizes and includes all nesting and inheritance links, which are the basics of the object-oriented model. Then, the inheritance is simulated in terms of nesting to get a simulated object graph. This way, everything in a simulated object graph is directly representable in XML format. Finally, we handle the mapping of the actual data from the object-oriented database into corresponding XML document(s).