1. A method for matching various combinations of XML Path Language (XPATH) Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), the method comprising: receiving a XPATH expression for a node in an XML document; retrieving the node identified by the XPATH expression and determining if a template exists for the identified node, the template residing in a database of a document management system; comparing the template expression to the XPATH expression and determining if the expressions match; when the XPATH expression does not match the template expression, modifying the XPATH expression to account for a dominant attribute required by the template; and, returning the modified XPATH expression.