Consistency problems in ER-schemas for database systems
Information Sciences: an International Journal - Special issue: Information technology
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
Cardinality constraints as well as key constraints and functionaldependencies are among the most popular classes of constraints indatabase models. While each constraint class is now wellunderstood, little is done about their interaction. Today cardinalityconstraints and key constraints are embedded in most CASE tools,which are usually based on the Entity-Relationship model.However, these tools do not offer intelligent consistency checkingroutines for cardinality constraints. They do not consider theglobal coherence of them. Conflicts among the constraints are notdetected. Our aim is then, to propose a tool for reasoning about aset of cardinality constraints, key and certain functionaldependencies in order to help in database design. We will treat theglobal coherence of cardinality constraints. We propose two steps:a syntactical analysis according to our ER Meta-schema and asemantic analysis in order to verify the cardinality constraints andtheir interactions.