Maintaining Mappings between Conceptual Models and Relational Schemas

This paper describes a round-trip engineering approach for incrementally maintaining mappings between conceptual models and relational schemas. When either schema or conceptual model evolves to accommodate new information needs, the existing mapping must be maintained accordingly to continuously pro...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of database management Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 36 - 68
Main Authors: Hu, Xiaohua, Song, Il-Yeol, An, Yuan
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Hershey IGI Global 01.07.2010
Subjects:
Algorithms
Compatibility
Conceptual models
Consistency
Design standards
Electronic data processing
Evolution
Experiments
Information needs
Mapping
Mathematical models
Methods
Schemas
ISSN:1063-8016, 1533-8010
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper describes a round-trip engineering approach for incrementally maintaining mappings between conceptual models and relational schemas. When either schema or conceptual model evolves to accommodate new information needs, the existing mapping must be maintained accordingly to continuously provide valid services. In this paper, the authors examine the mappings specifying “consistent” relationships between models. First, they define the consistency of a conceptual-relational mapping through “semantically compatible” instances. Next, the authors analyze the knowledge encoded in the standard database design process and develop round-trip algorithms for incrementally maintaining the consistency of conceptual-relational mappings under evolution. Finally, they conduct a set of comprehensive experiments. The results show that the proposed solution is efficient and provides significant benefits in comparison to the mapping reconstructing approach.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ObjectType-Article-2
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:1063-8016
1533-8010
DOI:10.4018/jdm.2010070102