Updateable Object Views

In this dissertation we present a new approach to updatable, object-oriented, virtual (non-materialized) database views. It is based on the Stack-Based Approach (SBA) to object-oriented query languages, which assumes the description of semantics in the form of abstract implementation of query/programming language constructs. The semantics is expressed in terms of naming, scoping and binding. It involves an environment stack a basic mechanism of majority of programming languages. The novelty of our approach is that a view definer has the possibility to introduce into a view definition any information about intents of view updates. The information has the form of procedures, which dynamically overload generic view updating operation. This feature opens possibilities, which have not been even considered in other approaches. The approach is relevant not only to any kind of object-oriented and object-relational database management systems, but can also be used to constructing intelligent wrappers and mediators for federated databases, or for Web and/or XML applications. We present a detailed description of our approach including the syntax, semantics, implementation and pragmatics of corresponding language constructs. We also present a prototype implementation of the approach (named SBQL Views) and compare the approach with an alternative approach implemented in Oracle and MS SQL Server based on instead-of triggers.