Organic databases
by H.V. Jagadish; Li Qian; Arnab Nandi
International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering (IJCSE), Vol. 11, No. 3, 2015

Abstract: Databases today are carefully engineered: there is an expensive and deliberate design process, after which a database schema is defined; during this design process, various possible instance examples and use cases are hypothesised and carefully analysed; finally, the schema is ready and then can be populated with data. All of this effort is a major barrier to database adoption. In this paper, we explore the possibility of organic database creation instead of the traditional engineered approach. The idea is to let the user start storing data in a database with a schema that is just enough to cove the instances at hand. We then support efficient schema evolution as new data instances arrive. By designing the database to evolve, we can sidestep the expensive front-end cost of carefully engineering the design of the database. Indeed, the deliberate design model complicates not only database creation, but also database transformation (i.e., schema mapping) because traditional schema mapping tasks are carefully engineered with declarative specification hidden beneath complex user interface. In this paper, we also study the issue of organic database transformation, which automatically induces schema mappings from sample target database instances.

Online publication date: Fri, 23-Oct-2015

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering (IJCSE):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com