Unified class evolution by object-oriented views

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Authors: Svein Erik Bratsberg

Tags: 1992, conceptual modeling

Object-oriented databases are said to support evolution and incremental development. On the schema level, a firm restriction in this evolution is that it can only be done by evolving class hierarchies downwards by subclassing. We show a unified approach to class evolution in object-oriented databases, where class hierarchies are allowed to grow in all directions, covering for evolution situations like generalisation, specialisation, and class versioning. We show how to make the evolution transparent, allowing existing and new clients to coexist and be clients of the same (existing and new) objects. A design of this approach based on object-oriented database views is shown.

Read the full paper here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/3-540-56023-8_26