A vision for management of complex models

Abstract

Many problems encountered when building applications of database systems involve the manipulation of models. By "model," we mean a complex structure that represents a design artifact, such as a relational schema, object-oriented interface, UML model, XML DTD, web-site schema, semantic network, complex document, or software configuration. Many uses of models involve managing changes in models and transformations of data from one model into another. These uses require an explicit representation of "mappings" between models. We propose to make database systems easier to use for these applications by making "model" and "model mapping" first-class objects with special operations that simplify their use. We call this capability model management.In addition to making the case for model management, our main contribution is a sketch of a proposed data model. The data model consists of formal, object-oriented structures for representing models and model mappings, and of high-level algebraic operations on those structures, such as matching, differencing, merging, function application, selection, inversion and instantiation. We focus on structure and semantics, not implementation.

Clio: Schema Mapping Creation and Data Exchange

“…Declarative schema mapping formalisms have been used to provide formal semantics for data exchange [19], data integration [33], peer data management [28,13,25], pay-as-you-go integration systems [45], and model management operators [8]. A whole area of model management has focused on such issues as mapping composition [35,21,40] and mapping inverse [18,22].…”

Ten Challenges for Ontology Matching

“…It should also support permanent storage and identification of alignments in order to reliably use the existing alignments. In databases, several systems have been designed for offering a variety of matching methods and a library of mappings [4]. However, these were meant only as a component for design time integration and not as a service that can be used at run time.…”

Managing Inheritance Hierarchies in Object/Relational Mapping Tools

“…On the other hand, the scientific literature on ORM tools (e.g., [17]), apart from our previous work [5,6], is more limited or, simply, outdated by current technology offerings. The notion of mapping used in this paper is inspired from one proposed in the context of model management [3].…”