Sword: a Declarative Object-oriented Database Architecture

We present a language Noodle in which to specify declarative queries in an object-oriented database system. The language models object-identity, classes, relations, views, inheritance, complex objects, and methods, in addition to logical rules. Noodle is intended to be used as a query language in an object-oriented database system, with the beneets of declarativeness, namely increased eeciency and reduced programming time. We address implementation and optimization issues. We describe how a system, such as the one we are designing at AT&T Bell Labs, would compile and optimize the language Noodle in an object-oriented system where encapsulation makes it diicult to do global query optimization. Our work bridges the gap between deductive and object-oriented databases. We believe that our language is suuciently general to allow a wide range of object-oriented queries to be expressed in a declarative way.