XML and semantic data formats (RDF) are currently in the main focus of many researchers who propose and develop more and more efficient techniques for their processing. Consequently, being users, we need to know which of the existing approaches is the most sufficient for our particular application. On the other hand, being vendors who develop a new SW or researchers proposing a new approach, we need to test its correctness and performance and, especially, to compare its main advantages with competing representatives. And being analysts, we are especially interested in comparison of various aspects of existing systems and methods from different points of view. Consequently, standardized approaches to testing the developed techniques and their mutual comparing need to be proposed and developed as well.

It is very common, however, that suitable testing data are not easily available and, hence, they need to be synthesized. Therefore, not only predefined fixed XML and semantic data sets but also methods for their synthesis on the basis of user-specified constraints are essential. They can involve physical parameters such as size, depth, fan-out etc. as well as more complex ones such as integrity constraints.

Another problem related to XML and semantic data processing is that the techniques often require a kind of structural or semantic description of the processed data, such as XML schema or ontology. However, in real-world situations the schema is often missing or, if it exists, the data are not fully valid. Hence, the techniques must be accompanied with methods for inferring schemas as well as integrity constraints.

And, finally, a true benchmark involves not only data, but also respective operations, such as queries, XSL transformations etc. Therefore another set of open problems related to specification of reasonable benchmarking operations opens.

We invite submission from research communities dealing with different theoretical and applied aspects of XML and semantic data benchmarking. The papers can cover results and experiences with benchmarking selected applications, proposals of benchmarking projects, approaches to synthesis of data sets and/or operations, as well as other related topics such as analyses of real-world data collections, schema inference, integrity constraints inference etc.

Areas of interests include, but are not limited to: