Identifying extended entity-relationship object structures in relational schemas
- Lawrence Berkeley Lab., Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Computer Science Research
- Technion-Israel Inst. of Tech., Haifa (Israel). Dept. of Computer Science
One of the main goals of database design is to capture the structural semantics of information systems. This goal can be achieved by using an object-oriented data model for specifying the structure of an information system in terms of objects and object connections, and then translating such a specification into a relational database definition (schema). In previous papers the authors have investigated the problem of representing object structures using relational constructs in the context of an extended entity-relationship (EER) model. In this paper they address the reverse problem, namely of identifying EER object structures in relational schemas. They consider relational schemas consisting of relation-schemes, key dependencies, and key-based inclusion dependencies (referential integrity constraints). Schemas of this form are said to be EER-convertible if they can be associated with an EER schema. A procedure that determines whether a relational schema is EER-convertible if they can be associated with an EER schema. A procedure that determines whether a relational schema is EER-convertible is developed. They propose a normal form for relational schemas representing EER object structures. For EER-convertible relational schemas they present the corresponding normalization procedure. The procedures presented in this paper can be used for analyzing the semantics of existing relational databases, and for converting relational database schemas into object-oriented database schemas.
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00098
- OSTI ID:
- 6969350
- Journal Information:
- IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Transactions on Software Engineering; (United States), Vol. 16:8; ISSN 0098-5589
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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