Authors:
Papotti, Paolo; Torlone, Riccardo
URL:
http://www.dia.uniroma3.it/%7Epapotti/Projects/Gaia/pdf/ER07.pdf
In this paper we study the problem of schema exchange, a
natural extension of the data exchange problem to an intensional level.
To this end, we first introduce the notion of schema template, a tool for
the representation of a class of schemas sharing the same structure. We
then define the schema exchange notion as the problem of (i) taking a
schema that matches a source template, and (ii) generating a new schema
for a target template, on the basis of a set of dependencies defined over
the two templates. This framework allows the definition, once for all,
of generic transformations that work for several schemas. A method for
the generation of a “correct” solution of the schema exchange problem is
proposed and a number of general results are given. We also show how
it is possible to generate automatically a data exchange setting from a
schema exchange solution. This allows the definition of queries to migrate
data from a source database into the one obtained as a result of a schema
exchange.