The view-constraint duality in database systems, software engineering, and systems engineering

Abstract

In database systems, software engineering, and systems engineering, the concepts of constraints and views are commonly and effectively used. Considered distinct, they stand as well-established notions in each domain’s body of knowledge. The focus of this paper is to explore the duality between views and constraints in these domains and investigate the efficacy of this duality in enabling more effective model interoperability. We provide empirical evidence for the duality and demonstrate cases where the duality is useful for constraint specification across modeling paradigms as commonly occurs across multiple organizations.