Meta Object Management and its Application to Database Evolution

In this paper, we address the problem of supporting more exibility on the schema of object-oriented databases. We describe a general framework based on an object-oriented data model, where three levels of objects are distinguished: data objects,schema objects,and metaschema objects. We discuss the prerequisites for applying the query and update operations of an object algebra uniformly on all three levels. As a sample application of the framework, we focus on database evolution, that is, realizing incremental changes to the database schema and their propagation to data instances. We show, how each schema update of a given taxonomy is realized by direct updating of schema objects, and how this approach can be used to build a complete tool for database evolution.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1992
• Where: ER
• Authors: Markus Tresch, Marc H. Scholl
• Keywords: Database, Database Evolution, ER 1992, Object-oriented Data Model, Objects