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View integration in database design

University of British Columbia

Database designers usually spend much time integrating database views created by different users. This is because different users have different perceptions of the real world. Therefore, conflicts exist between database views. The most common conflicts found are naming and structural ones. Wagner (1989) suggests four characteristics (name, meaning, construct and context) that can be used to identify and distinguish database elements. He also provides a complete solution for the inter-view conflicts. Finally, he derives some heuristic rules that are used to determine similar database elements. However, Wagner's approach does not provide database designers with an efficient conflict analysis procedure. Moreover, no direction is given to database designers for the comparison of different database elements. So, database designers have to compare unnecessary elements. The objective of this research is to lessen the requirement of the view integration system to interact with database designers during a conflict analysis. A more efficient method of conflict analysis is outlined which compares elements in the following order: 1) entities, 2) relatedness, 3) relationships and 4) attributes. Fuzzy logic is also used to provide database designers with some numerical analysis of the degree of similarity between entities. This concept is used at the stage of entities and relatedness identification. The improved view integration system reduces much of the database designers' workload by comparing fewer elements during the conflict analysis.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-03-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/5970

Business Administration - Management Information Systems

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace