Active XML: A Data-Centric Perspective on Web Services.

Abstract

We propose a peer-based architecture that allows for the integration of distributed data and web services. It relies on a language, Active XML, where (1) documents embed calls to web services that are used to enrich them, and (2) new web services may be defined by XQuery queries on such active documents. Embedding calls to functions or even to web services inside data is not a new idea. Our contribution, however, is turning them into a powerful tool for data and services integration. In particular, the language includes linguistic features to control the timing of service call activations. Various scenarios are captured, such as mediation, data warehousing, and distributed computation. A first prototype is described.