System and method for context-sensitive decomposition of XML documents based on schemas with reusable element/attribute declarations

A system and computer-based method is provided for context-sensitive decomposition of a markup based document into a relational database, based on schemas with reusable item declarations. The user creates a mapping document from a schema of a markup based document with at least one reusable item declaration defining an item being mapped to different tables/columns pairs, depending on the item's ancestry. Mapping document is then annotated with the item ancestry mapping annotation having a location path of the item. Each item is decomposed into a corresponding table column. Preferably, the mapping document is an annotated XML Schema.