Mathemtical model of composite objects and its application for organizing engineering databases

• Published in: IEEE transactions on software engineering 1988-01, Vol.14 (1), p.71-84
• Main Authors: Ketabchi, M.A., Berzins, V.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Application software; Assembly; Boolean algebra; Data engineering; Explosions; Information retrieval; Object oriented databases; Object oriented modeling; Organizing; Relational databases
• ISSN: 0098-5589; 1939-3520
• DOI: 10.1109/32.4624

The authors introduce a clustering concept called component aggregation which considers assemblies having the same types of parts as equivalent objects. The notion of equivalent objects is used to develop a mathematical model of composite objects. It is shown that the set of equivalence classes of objects form a Boolean algebra whose minterms represent the objects that are not considered composite at the current viewing level. The algebraic structure of composite objects serves as a basis for developing a technique for organizing composite objects and supporting materialization of explosion views. The technique provides a clustering mechanism which partitions the database into meaningful and application-oriented clusters, and allows any desired explosion view to be materialized using a minimal set of stored views. A simplified relational database for design data and a set of frequent access patterns in design applications are outlined and used to demonstrate the benefits of database organizations based on the mathematical model of composite objects.< >