Re-engineering Relational Normal Forms in an Object-Oriented Framework

摘要

In relational database design, the normal forms have long served as a guide to the proper dispersion of application attributes across multiple tables. These canonical complex constraints to foreclose more and more subtle opportunities for inconsistency in the application data. Although object-oriented database design disperses application attributes across classes rather than tables, constraint enforcement remains an important concern. In the transition from a relational to an object-oriented environment, the database designer must reconcile normalization rpocesses with newer approaches that identify the core application classes (e.g., Jacobson's Objectory, Rumbaugh's Object Modeling Technique, or Booch's method). In particular, the reengineering of a legacy system may involve the study of a relational design in which normal forms were used to establish the database tables. This paper reviews relational normal forms, interprets them in an object-oriented context, and provide guidelines to port relational normal forms to an object-oriented database.