Patent ID: 8560523

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for matching materialized XML views, comprising: inputting a query expression and a view expression; constructing a multi-path tree (MPT) data structure for the query expression and the view expression; normalizing the MPT data structure via a plurality of transformations that include: changing occurrences of an attribute axis in the MPT data structure to a child axis in the MPT data structure to generate normalized MPT data structures, combining successive AND nodes, OR nodes, and nodes in the MPT data structure that are linked by a self axis, pushing OR nodes in the MPT data structure down over common prefixes, and removing NIL nodes in the MPT data structure that occur in conjunctions or that occur with other NIL nodes in disjunctions; and performing view matching of the normalized MPT data structures to generate a set of partial matches that represent possible matches for the materialized XML views.