Towards the unification of views and versions for object databases

Abstract

There have been a number of approaches to views and meta-data versioning for object databases. However, the essential similarities between the notions of views and versions have not been adequately explored. This paper introduces the concept of a virtual database to unify these two notions in the object database context. The semantics of virtual databases is presented, and a mechanism for interactively creating and deleting virtual databases and manipulating their schemas and instances is described. The application of the virtual database concept to supporting both views and versions in a unified manner is studied, and its practical utility is examined.