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Theoretical aspects of schema merging

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Advances in Database Technology — EDBT '92 (EDBT 1992)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 580))

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Abstract

A general technique for merging database schemas is developed that has a number of advantages over existing techniques, the most important of which is that schemas are placed in a partial order that has bounded joins. This means that the merging operation, when it succeeds, is both associative and commutative, i.e., that the merge of schemas is independent of the order in which they are considered — a property not possessed by existing methods. The operation is appropriate for the design of interactive programs as it allows user assertions about relationships between nodes in the schemas to be considered as elementary schemas. These can be combined with existing schemas using precisely the same merging operation.

The technique is general and can be applied to a variety of data models. It can also deal with certain cardinality constraints that arise through the imposition of keys. A prototype implementation, together with a graphical interface, has been developed.

This research was supported in part by ARO DAAL03-89-C-0031PRIME and NSF IRI 8610617, Peter Buneman was also supported by a UK SERC funded visit to Imperial College, London.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, 19104-6389, Philadelphia, PA

    P. Buneman, S. Davidson & A. Kosky

Authors
  1. P. Buneman
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  2. S. Davidson
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  3. A. Kosky
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Alain Pirotte Claude Delobel Goerg Gottlob

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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Buneman, P., Davidson, S., Kosky, A. (1992). Theoretical aspects of schema merging. In: Pirotte, A., Delobel, C., Gottlob, G. (eds) Advances in Database Technology — EDBT '92. EDBT 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 580. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0032429

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0032429

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-55270-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47003-8

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