Schema Evolution publication categorizer

Recent position papers demand more schema flexibility, such as the ability to handle variational data [3, 42]. Many agile software developers have long since turned towards NoSQL database systems such as MongoDB 1, Couchbase 2, or ArangoDB 3 which are schema-flexible, or even altogether schema-free. They allow to store datasets in different structural versions to co-exist. Yet even when the database management system does not maintain an explicit schema, there is commonly an implicit schema, as the application code makes assumptions about the structure of the stored data.

During the development of NoSQL-backed software, the database schema evolves naturally alongside the application code. Especially in agile development, new application releases are deployed frequently. Eventually, decisions have to be made regarding the migration of versioned legacy data which is persisted in the cloud-hosted production database.