Inheritance hierarchy design in object-oriented databases

Catriel Beeri, Anna Formica, Michele Missikoff

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

Object-oriented database schema design is still mostly an art. One of the difficulties encountered during design is typing conflicts induced by multiple inheritance. In this paper, we propose a method for treating such a kind of conflicts. Our approach to inheritance conflict solving consists of several ingredients. First, we rely on branding, to introduce `type equivalence by name', thus allowing a designer to distinguish between structurally similar but semantically different types. However, we offer a heuristic that does not require a designer to explicitly state branding declarations. Second, we describe various kinds of conflicts, and we offer a set of procedures that analyze a schema to discover such conflicts, classify them, offering potential solutions, if possible. The procedures have been conceived for a design system that allows a designer maximum flexibility, while guiding him/her to a correct design.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)191-216
Number of pages26
JournalData and Knowledge Engineering
Volume30
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 1999

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Inheritance hierarchy design in object-oriented databases'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this