XQuery is the standard XML query language, significa t effort has been
made in developing efficient implementations of XQuery query
processor.This thesis describes a purely relational implementation of an
XQuery processor which exploits the well-known maturity and performance
acceleration techniques of the relational database technology to
translate XQuery expressions into their equivalent SQL evaluation
scripts. The generated SQL evaluation scripts can be executed on any
conventional relational database management systems with no need for any
changes in its kernel or any other special requirements. In addition,
this thesis presents a novel framework for estimating the cardinality of
XQuery expressions as well as its sub-expressions. Although cardinality
size estimation is very important on its own, it is also very crucial
for an effective query optimization process. This thesis presents an
integrated framework for exploiting the available estimated cardinality
information to provide the RDBMS query optimizers with hints for
selecting the best alternative execution plan for the SQL evaluation
scripts of the input XQuery expression.