The entity-relationship model—toward a unified view of data
ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS) - Special issue: papers from the international conference on very large data bases: September 22–24, 1975, Framingham, MA
An introduction to database systems (The Systems programming series)
An introduction to database systems (The Systems programming series)
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Over the past few years the amount of computing power and storage available to the office worker has greatly increased, resulting in the introduction of increasingly sophisticated and varied office systems applications. Many of these applications operate on structured data that could be manages by a general-purpose database system, but are instead stored in flat files in an application-specific format. On the other hand, applications that operate on relatively unstructured data, such as for word processing, need the transparency and efficiency of a conventional file interface.To this end, we have developed the "Office Database" (ODB), an integrated database and file system based on the Entity_Relationship model. The ODB database interface supports structured data, while the file system interface supports the unstructured data. ODB databases also serve as directories for files (and databases, allowing arbitrary organization and identification of user files and databases.This paper first describes the office application environment and the requirements for an office database. Next, the data model and programming interface for ODB are described. Following this is a description of a full-screen interactive interface to ODB. An overview of the implementation of ODB is given, as well as some details on the current status, and conclusions about the significance of the work.