2011/04/13 by Rajeev Alur, Alur, Rajeev, Loris D'Antoni +2 · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Databases (cs.DB) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Formal Languages and Automata Theory (cs.FL) #Formal Methods in Verification #Logic, programming, and type systems #Model-Driven Software Engineering Techniques #cs.DB #cs.FL
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1104.2599
40 pages
openalex publication_date 2011/04/13 · arxiv created 2012/02/21 · arxiv updated 2012/02/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Theory of tree transducers provides a foundation for understanding expressiveness and complexity of analysis problems for specification languages for transforming hierarchically structured data such as XML documents. We introduce streaming tree transducers as an analyzable, executable, and expressive model for transforming unranked ordered trees in a single pass. Given a linear encoding of the input tree, the transducer makes a single left-to-right pass through the input, and computes the output in linear time using a finite-state control, a visibly pushdown stack, and a finite number of variables that store output chunks that can be combined using the operations of string-concatenation and tree-insertion. We prove that the expressiveness of the model coincides with transductions definable using monadic second-order logic (MSO). Existing models of tree transducers either cannot implement all MSO-definable transformations, or require regular look ahead that prohibits single-pass implementation. We show a variety of analysis problems such as type-checking and checking functional equivalence are solvable for our model.