Intelligent SQL

Intelligent SQL is an intelligent database engine interface language which incorporates object-oriented, inferencing, and multi-media constructs. It is intended to be a powerful extension of existing SQL dialects. It also provides querying capabilities for object-oriented databases. Intelligent SQL was prototyped at Ashton-Tate. This paper discusses the main features of Intelligent SQL.     

Inheritance and generalization in intelligent SQL

Inheritance provides a way to model complex real-world relationships in a database management system. This paper examines inheritance in Intelligent SQL, the access language for an intelligent database under development at Ashton-Tate. Intelligent SQL includes specialization and generalization as complementary aspects of inheritance and describes a set inclusion semantics for them. We illustrate how these concepts can be used to present a global view of distributed data, through bottom-up integration of existing, heterogeneous SQL databases.     

Parallel evaluation of the transitive closure of a database relation

Parallelism is a promising approach to high performance data management. In a highly parallel data server with declustered data placement, an important issue is to exploit parallelism in processing complex queries such as recursive queries. In this paper, we consider the transitive closure of a database relation as a paradigm to study parallel recursive query processing. And we propose two new parallel algorithms for evaluating the transitive closure of a relation in a parallel data server. Performance comparisons based on an analytical model indicate the superior response time of the parallel algorithms over their centralized version. With one hundred nodes, performance gain is between one and two orders of magnitude. One parallel algorithm provides superior response time while the other exhibits better response time/total time trade-off.This work had been done within the Advanced Computer Architecture Program, Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, Austin, Texas. The current affiliation of Setrag Khoshafian is Ashton-Tate, Walnut Creek, California.     

Schema design and mapping strategies for persistent object models

A formal model is presented for a conceptual schema of persistent object models that support a strong notion of object identity. The object constructors in the model are sets, tuples, and disjunct. The databases that correspond to such schemata are graph-structured object spaces. These conceptual object spaces are mapped onto physical object spaces, which are typically forests of trees. The characteristics of the physical schemata are discussed and an algorithm to transform a conceptual schema into a physical schema is given.     

A persistent complex object database language

To support a number of emerging applications we propose a persistent complex object database language which is “value” based. The object space is built through the set and tuple object constructors, with practically no normalization constraints on the nesting levels. The proposed persistent database language can serve both as an interface language to the database management system in itself or as the target language of a conceptual data language. Some of the features of the language include: (i) Notion of “path's” capturing logical references to retrieve and update the persistent database, (ii) a rich set of allowable schema types, including disjuncts, and (iii) a collection of powerful operator constructors for sets.