A software tool for object and XML schemas generation

Abstract

Nowadays relational database schemas are designed by using well-known database design techniques such as the entity relationship model and the normalization process. The result schemas can be guaranteed to have minimum redundancies if the fifth normal form (5NF) is achieved. However, in more recent database schema design such as the design of object database schema, the concern about minimum redundancies does not seem to be an important issue. Functional dependencies may still appear in an object class of the class diagram thus introduce update anomalies. This paper presents the use of NIAM, a well-established conceptual schema model, as a conceptual model for the design of object databases. A transformation from a NIAM to an OODB schema with minimum redundancy is presented. The conceptual schema can also be transformed into an XML schema. This is a good approach to XML schema design since NIAM gives a conceptual framework for the design. A transformation from a NIAM schema to an XML schema is presented. A software tool for object and XML schema generation has been developed.