A generative approach to database federation

Abstract

This paper introduces a comprehensive, specification-based approach to database federation, supporting an integrated ODMG-93 conforming access to object-oriented and relational databases. Central point is a set of intuitive specification languages. These languages allow defining ODMG-93 views of existing databases, and building system spanning federated views thereupon. Given concrete specifications defining those views, ODMG schemas are generated automatically due to a generative approach. Heterogeneous databases can be plugged into a federation without implementing adapters for any schema again and again. The generative nature provides flexibility wrt. schema modification of component databases, as new views are implemented automatically. Furthermore, the approach is one of the first to support manipulating federated data seamlessly in C++.