EXTENSION OF PATTERN LOCATING CAPABILITY IN XPATH

XPath is deficient in locating method based on general structures, which is important for a complete XML document oriented query mechanism. Examples first are illustrated to elucidate the need to make the extensions and then some extensions are made for XPath. The extensions are developed from three perspectives. From the perspective of concept, definitions of node sequence pattern and node regular expression are introduced. From the perspective of syntax description, a data type called “NRegexType” and a function called “match” are extended into XPath. From the perspective of execution mechanism, a formal automaton is defined, which is used to analyze the recognition process for node sequence patterns.