Managing schema evolution using a temporal object model

Abstract

The issues of schema evolution and temporal object models are generally considered to be orthogonal and are handled independently. This is unrealistic because to properly model applications that need incremental design and experimentation (such as CAD, software design process), the evolutionary histories of the schema objects should be traceable. In this paper we propose a method for managing schema changes by exploiting the functionality of a temporal object model. The result is a uniform treatment of schema evolution and temporal support for many object database management systems applications that require both.