Indexing and retrieval of XML-encoded structured documents in dynamic environment

Abstract

In order to retrieve structured documents efficiently, many researches have been done to design indexing technique that supports fast and direct access for arbitrary element as well as whole document. On the other hand, fast and efficient indexing technique for supporting dynamic update of structured documents in business domain is required. In this paper, we propose an inverted index structure that supports dynamic update, such as including both structure and content updates, quickly. In the proposed index structure, in addition to a horizontal term-based index as in general inverted file structure, we add a vertical index. The vertical index uses element identifier as key. Using this dual index structure, it is possible to support fast and efficient updates on the parts of a document as well as whole document as reducing re-indexed space and time dramatically.