Queries and views in an object-oriented data model

  • Authors:
  • Umeshwar Dayal

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the second international workshop on Database programming languages
  • Year:
  • 1989

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Abstract

This paper shows how a semantic data model can be extended to become an object-oriented data model. The model is based on abstract entities, functions, types, and inheritance. The paper discusses issues that were considered in designing two query languages for this object-oriented model. Early languages for object-oriented data models were navigational and iterative, and did not support associative or set-oriented queries. Relational query languages, on the other hand, are purely associative and set-oriented. The languages we define here uniformly support the formulation of associative and navigational queries over objects, and also of queries that return individual objects as well as those that return aggregates (collections) of objects. One query language is an extension of DAPLEX; the other is algebraic. The algebra serves both to define the semantics of the higher level language, and also as the basis for query optimization. We illustrate how to map queries from the higher level language to the algebra. Finally, we discuss the special problems of defining views in object-oriented data models.