A Semantic Approach to the Design of Valid and Reversible Semistructured Views

Existing systems that support semistructured views do not maintain semantics during the process of designing the views. Thus, these systems do not guarantee the validity and reversibility of the views. In this paper, we propose an approach to address the issue of valid and reversible semistructured views. We design a set of view operators for designing semistructured views. These operators are select, drop, join and swap. For each operator, we develop a complete set of rules to maintain the semantics of the views. In particular, we maintain the evolution and integrity of relationships once an operator is applied. We also examine the reversible view problem under our operators and develop rules to guarantee that the designed views are reversible. Finally, we examine the changes in the participation constraints of relationship types during the view design process, and develop rules to ensure the correctness of the participation constraints.