%0 Journal Article %T On an Integral Approach for Searching XML Documents in a Collaborative Environment %A Dr. Jinan A.W. Fiaidhi %A Dr. Sabah M.A. Mohammed %A Lei Yang %J Asian Journal of Information Technology %D 2012 %I %X The goal of searching XML documents is to identify XML documents which best match users information needs. At first glance, this seems very simple because XML structure resembles a database. Hence, searching is merely to identify XML documents which contain the tags and words which are also contained in the user`s query. However, this is not completely true without having a collaborative ontology, a query expansion mechanism and query relaxation techniques. This article highlights those issues and presents an integral approach for searching XML documents. A Java-based software prototype for the integral approach is built within a collaborative environment to demonstrate the validity of the approach. %U http://www.medwellonline.net/abstract/?doi=ajit.2004.56.68