Abstract
To improve XML query processing, it is necessary to label XML documents efficiently for the indexing process because it allows the structural relationships between the XML nodes to be preserved without having to access the original document. However, XML data on the Web is updated as time passes, which means that the dynamic updating of XML data is an issue that may need to be handled by a XML labeling scheme specifically designed for dynamic updates. Previous XML labeling schemes have limitations when updates take place. For example, a lot of node labels need to be relabeled, a lot of duplicate labels occur during this relabeling process, and the size and time costs of the updated labels are high. Therefore, this paper proposes an efficient prefix-based labeling scheme that uses a hexagonal pattern. The proposed labeling scheme has three main advantages: (i) it avoids the need for node relabeling when XML documents are updated at random locations, (ii) it avoids duplicated labels by creating a new label for every inserted node, and (iii) it reduces the size and time costs of the updated labels. The proposed scheme is evaluated against the three most recent prefix-based labeling schemes in terms of the size and time costs of the updated labels. In addition, the ability of the proposed labeling scheme to handle several updates (such as insertions) in XML documents is also evaluated. The evaluations show that the proposed labeling scheme outperforms previously developed prefix-based labeling schemes in terms of both size and time costs, particularly for large-scale XML datasets, resulting in improved query processing performance. Moreover, the proposed scheme efficiently supports frequent updates at arbitrary positions. The paper concludes with several suggestions for further research.