Abstract
One of the central notions in database modelling is the notion of a database view. A database view closely corresponds to the notion of derived class in UML. This paper will show how the notion of a relational database view can be correctly expressed as a derived class in UML/OCL (version 2.0). A central part of our investigation concerns the generality of our manner of representing relational views in OCL. Since, in general terms, a database view closely corresponds to the notion of a named query, an important problem that we address in our paper is the expressiveness of OCL as a query language. In particular, we will discuss the relational completeness of OCL (w.r.t the relational algebra). We will show that OCL (version 2.0) is relationally complete in a minimal sense, but not in a (desired) maximal sense. As a consequence, we will argue for certain language extensions in OCL in order to achieve that OCL is maximally relationally complete.
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Balsters, H. (2003). Modelling Database Views with Derived Classes in the UML/OCL-framework. In: Stevens, P., Whittle, J., Booch, G. (eds) «UML» 2003 - The Unified Modeling Language. Modeling Languages and Applications. UML 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2863. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45221-8_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45221-8_25
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