Sven-Eric Lautemann. A Propagation Mechanism for Populated Schema Versions. In W. A. Gray, Per-Åke Larson, editors, Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Data Engineering, April 7-11, 1997 Birmingham U.K. pages 67-78, IEEE Computer Society, 1997. [doi]
Object-oriented databasesystems (OODBMS)offerpow- erJil modeling concepts as required by advanced applica- tion domains like CAx or office automation. Typical appli- cationshave to handle large and complex structured objects whichfrequently change their value and their structure. As the structure is described in the schema of the database, support for schema evolution is a highly required feature. Therefore, a set of schema (updateprimitives must be pro- vided which can be used to perjGorm the required changes, even in thepresence ofpopulateddatabases and running ap- plications, In thispaper, we use the versioning approach to schema evolution to support schema updates as a complex design task. The presented propagation mechanism is based on conversion functions that inup objects between different types and can be used to mpport scherna evolution and schema integration.