Abstract
Developing a declarative approach to schema integration in the context of heterogeneous database systems is a major goal of this research. We take a first step toward this goal in this paper, by developing a simple logic called SchemaLog which is syntactically higher-order but has a first-order semantics. SchemaLog can provide for a logical integration of multiple relational databases in a federation of database systems. We develop a fixpoint theory as well as a sound and complete proof theory for the definite clause fragment of SchemaLog and show their equivalence to the model-theoretic semantics. We argue that a uniform framework for schema integration as well as schema evolution is both desirable and possible. We illustrate the simplicity and power of SchemaLog with a variety of applications involving database programming (with schema browsing), schema integration, schema evolution, and cooperative query answering.
This research was supported in part by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Fonds Pour Formation De Chercheurs Et L'Aide Á La Recherche of Quebec.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
K. R. Apt, H. A. Blair, and A. Walker. Towards a theory of declarative knowledge. In J. Minker, editor, Foundations of Deductive Databases and Logic Programming. Morgan-Koffmann, 1988.
ACM. ACM Computing Surveys, volume 22, Sept 1990. Special issue on HDBS.
S. Abiteboul and S. Grumbach. Col: A logic-based language for complex objects. In Proc. of Workshop on Database Programming Languages, pages 253–276, 1987.
R. Ahmed et. al. The pegasus heterogeneous multidatabase system. IEEE Computer, Dec 1991.
C. Batini et. al. A comparitive analysis of methodologies for database schema integration. ACM Comput. Surveys, pages 323–364, Dec 1986.
T. Barsalou and D. Gangopadhyay. An open framework for interoperation of multimodel multidatabase systems. In IEEE Data Engg., 1992.
F. Cuppens and R. Demolombe. Cooperative answering: a methodology to provide intelligent accesss to databases. In Second Intl. conf. on Expert Database Systems, 1988.
W. Chen, M. Kifer, and D. S. Warren. Hilog as a platform for database language. In 2nd Intl. workshop on Database Programming Languages, June 1989.
W. Chen, M. Kifer, and D. S. Warren. A foundation for higher-order logic programming. Expanded paper, 1990.
C.L. Chang and R. C. T. Lee. Symbolic Logic and Mechanical Theorem Proving. New York, Academic Press, 1973.
T. Gaasterland, P. Godfrey, and J. Minker. An overview of cooperative answering. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, 1:123–157, 1992.
D. K. Hsiao. Federated databases and systems: Part-one — a tutorial on their data sharing. VLDB Journal, 1:127–179, 1992.
Won Kim. Introduction to Object Oriented Databases. MIT Press, 1990.
R. Krishnamurthy, W. Litwin, and W. Kent. Language features for interoperability of databases with schematic discrepancies. In ACM SIGMOD Conference on Management of Data, pages 40–49, 1991.
M. Kifer, G. Lausen, and J. Wu. Logical foundations of frame-based languages. Technical Report 90/14, SUNY at Stony Brook, August 1990.
R. Krishnamurthy and S. Naqvi. Towards a real horn clause language. In Proceedings of the 14th VLDB Conf., pages 252–263, 1988.
J. W. Lloyd. Foundations of Logic Programming. Springer Verlag, second edition, 1987.
Witold Litwin, Mark Leo, and Nick Roussopoulos. Interoperability of multiple autonomous databases. ACM computing surveys, 22(3):267–293, Sept 1990.
T. Landers and R. Rosenberg. An overview of multibase. Distributed Databases, pages 153–184, 1982.
L.V.S. Lakshmanan, F. Sadri, and I. N. Subramanian. On the logical foundations of schema integration and evolution in heterogeneous database systems. Technical report, Concordia University, Montreal, July 1993.
S. Manchanda. Higher-order logic as a data model. In Proc. of the North American Conf. on Logic Programming, pages 330–341, 1989.
G. T. Nguyen and D. Rieu. Schema evolution in object-oriented database systems. Data and Knowledge Engg., North-Holland, 4:43–67, 1989.
J. C. Shepherdson. Negation in logic programming. In J. Minker, editor, Foundations of Deductive Databases and Logic Programming. Morgan-Koffmann, 1988.
Amit P. Sheth and James A. Larson. Federated database system for managing distributed, heterogeneous and autonomous databases. ACM computing surveys, 22(3):183–236, Sept 1990.
Osborn Sylvia. The role of polymorphism in schema evolution in an objectoriented database. In IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data Engg., pages 310–317, Sept 1989.
Templeton et. al. Mermaid: A front-end to distributed heterogeneous databases. In Proc. IEEE 75, 5, pages 695–708, May 1987.
J. D. Ullman. Database theory: Past and future. In Proc. of the ACM PODS, 1987.
J. D. Ullman. A comparison between deductive and object oriented database systems. In Proc. Deductive and Object Oriented Databases Conf., pages 263–277, 1991.
M. H. van Emden and R. A. Kowalski. The semantics of predicate logic as a programming language. JACM, 23(4):733–742, October 1976.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lakshmanan, L.V.S., Sadri, F., Subramanian, I.N. (1993). On the logical foundations of schema integration and evolution in heterogeneous database systems. In: Ceri, S., Tanaka, K., Tsur, S. (eds) Deductive and Object-Oriented Databases. DOOD 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 760. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-57530-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-57530-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-57530-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48212-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive