WOL: A Language for Database Transformations and Constraints

Authors: 
Davidson, Susan B.; Kosky, Anthony
Author: 
Davidson, S
Kosky, A
Year: 
1997
Venue: 
ICDE 1997
URL: 
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=653429
DOI: 
10.1109/ICDE.1997.581739
Citations: 
63
Citations range: 
50 - 99
AttachmentSize
Davidson1997WOLALanguageforDatabase.pdf23.24 KB

The need to transform data between heterogeneous databases arises from a number of critical tasks in data management. These tasks are complicated by schema evolution in the underlying databases and by the presence of non-standard database constraints. We describe a declarative language called WOL (Well-founded Object Logic) for specifying such transformations, and its implementation in a system called Morphase (an “enzyme” for morphing data). WOL is designed to allow transformations between the complex data structures which arise in object-oriented databases as well as in complex relational databases, and to allow for reasoning about the interactions between database transformations and constraints.