id: 01771028
dt: j
an: 01771028
au: Beeri, Catriel; Formica, Anna; Missikoff, Michele
ti: Inheritance hierarchy design in object-oriented databases.
so: Data Knowl. Eng. 30, No. 3, 191-216 (1999).
py: 1999
pu: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland), Amsterdam
la: EN
cc: 
ut: 
ci: 
li: doi:10.1016/S0169-023X(99)00011-7
ab: Summary: Object-oriented database schema design is still mostly an art. One
    of the difficulties encountered during design is typing conflicts
    induced by multiple inheritance. In this paper, we propose a method for
    treating such a kind of conflicts. Our approach to inheritance conflict
    solving consists of several ingredients. First, we rely on branding, to
    introduce ‘type equivalence by name’, thus allowing a designer to
    distinguish between structurally similar but semantically different
    types. However, we offer a heuristic that does not require a designer
    to explicitly state branding declarations. Second, we describe various
    kinds of conflicts, and we offer a set of procedures that analyze a
    schema to discover such conflicts, classify them, offering potential
    solutions, if possible. The procedures have been conceived for a design
    system that allows a designer maximum flexibility, while guiding
    him/her to a correct design.
rv: