Hyper Object Data Model: A Simple Data Model for Handling Semi-Structured Data

摘要

This paper introduces a new data model based for handling semi-structured data extending the existing HyperFile data model that uses the hypertext notion of free-form objects connected by links. The HyperFile model provides flexibility to store semi-structured data which cannot be stored by relational database efficiently. However, the model suffers from some incompleteness in its definition towards proper representation and retrieval of stored objects. This makes it difficult to implement HyperFile data model towards storage and manipulation of data. The proposed data model, namely, HyperObject data model (HODM) overcomes this problem. An appropriate new query language, called HyperObject query language (HOQL) is also introduced to efficiently manipulate data stored using HODM. The paper also includes framework to implement the data model and its query language as a blade on top of the relational data model. This makes it easy to implement and solves the problem of handling heterogeneous semi-structured data at a higher level of abstraction on top of an underlying relational database.