Uniform Access to Non-relational Database Systems: The SOS Platform

Non-relational databases (often termed as NoSQL) have recently emerged and have generated both interest and criticism. Interest because they address requirements that are very important in large-scale applications, criticism because of the comparison with well known relational achievements. One of the major problems often mentioned is the heterogeneity of the languages and the interfaces they offer to developers and users. Different platforms and languages have been proposed, and applications developed for one system require significant effort to be migrated to another one. Here we propose a common programming interface to NoSQL systems (and also to relational ones) called SOS (Save Our Systems). Its goal is to support application development by hiding the specific details of the various systems. It is based on a metamodeling approach, in the sense that the specific interfaces of the individual systems are mapped to a common one. The tool provides interoperability as well, since a single application can interact with several systems at the same time.