A equivalent object-oriented schema evolution approach using the path-independence language

Abstract

Software legacy problem caused by schema evolution in an Object-Oriented database is a very important research issue. This paper proposes a method of equivalent schema evolution based on a path-independence (PI) language. The PI language, which has been adopted in some systems, raises the level of abstraction for behavioral schema design and is almost independence with the specijic schema digraph. We develop the PI language and advocate the equivalent schema evolution method which not only resolves software reuse problem in schema evolution, but supports schema version mechanism, which is an advanced feature in a database system.