A System to Insert Automatically an Object in a Generalization Hierarchy*

Schema evolutivity is a major objective in database design. Generalization hierarchies allow the definition of new concepts by successive refinement of existing ones. This paper deals with the insertion of a new concept (object, entity, relationship ...) in a generalization hierarchy. This insertion is achieved using the inclusion semantic relations between object structures through a similarity computing process. A prototype called SIAGH was developed to implement the method. A session example with the different insertion cases (BELOW, ABOVE, BETWEEN, MERGE, MULTIPLENEIGHBOUR, SIMPLE-NEIGHBOUR, COUSIN). The insertion process respects all the semantic informations of concepts included in the hierarchy.