Round-trip engineering for maintaining conceptual-relational mappings

Abstract

Conceptual-relational mappings between conceptual models and relational schemas have been used increasingly to achieve interoperability or overcome impedance mismatch in modern data-centric applications. However, both schemas and conceptual models evolve over time to accommodate new information needs. When the conceptual model (CM) or the schema associated with a mapping evolved, the mapping needs to be updated to reflect the new semantics in the CM/schema. In this paper, we propose a round-trip engineering solution which essentially synchronizes models by keeping them consistent for maintaining concep- tual-relational mappings. First, we define the consistency of a conceptual-relational mapping through "semantically compatible" instances. Next, we carefully analyze the knowledge encoded in the standard database design process and develop round-trip algorithms for maintaining the consistency of conceptual-relational mappings under evolution. Finally, we conduct a set of comprehensive experiments. The results show that our solution is efficient and provides significant benefits in comparison to the mapping reconstructing approach. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.