Storage and Access Control Issues for XML Documents

Abstract

XML documents management is becoming an area of great research value and interest since XML has become a popular standard for data communication and knowledge exchange over the Internet. Therefore, new issues have emerged in terms of storage and access control policies for XML documents. Concerning the storage issues, the majority of proposals rely on the usage of typical database management systems (DBMSs), whereas XML documents can also be stored in other storage environments (such as file systems and LDAP directories). It is important to consider storage and access control together since these issues are essential in implementations for XML documents management. Moreover, the chapter focuses on the recent access control models which guarantee the security of the XML-based data, which are located in a variety of storage topologies. This chapter’s goal is to survey and classify existing approaches for XML documents storage and access control, and, at the same time, highlight the main differences between them. The most popular XML database software tools are outlined in terms of their storage and access control policies.