TOOBIS - Temporal Object-Oriented Databases in Information Systems

 

ESPRIT Project No. 20671

TOOBIS is an EEC-funded project of the ESPRIT-IV framework.

 

Summary

TOOBIS aims to the development of a competitive Temporal Object Oriented Database Management System that will support the representation and querying of bitemporal data.

It will also develop an innovative conceptual modelling methodology, for temporal applications.

In that respect TOOBIS contributes to the ease of access to information, by extending the core functionality of DBMSs.

 

Background and Needs

The consortium has chosen Object Orientation as the foundation technology, as it is a leading edge technology, which will increase its share in the database market. This may occur, either directly, by the increase of market share of pure OODBMSs, or indirectly, by the incorporation of Object Oriented (OO) concepts in RDBMS technology.

O2 OODBMS was chosen as the implementation platform mainly for two reasons. Firstly because it is the market leader of OODBMSs in Europe an the third in market share world-wide. Secondly, because existing RDBMSs lack object oriented functionality and only plan to incorporate them in the near future. Also, the industrial end users participating in the consortium appeal to a methodological approach to temporal applications development as well as availability of appropriate TDBMSs to support the effort.

TOOBIS will exploit the expertise from involvement in previous research projects and follow existing (ODMG-93) or emerging standards (ODMG-95, SQL3) as much as possible. The theoretical basis of TOOBIS will benefit from the results of the ORES project at the logical level of temporal extension to DBMSs. ORES implemented the temporal functionality based on the relational data model and on top of an RDBMS. The project TOOBIS will port this functionality to an object data model and implement it in O2 OODBMS. It will also, exploit the results of other projects such as REMORA, RUBIS, O*, and Business Class on the methodological aspects of analysing and designing temporal databases.
 

Project Objectives and Results

  1. Extend the core functionality offered by the O2 OODBMS, by supporting both valid and transaction time, being compatible with standards of ODMG and forthcoming SQL-3 standard definitions.
  2. Comply with evolving ODBMS standards, participate and influence standards definition groups.
  3. Extend the functionality of O2 OODBMS, providing the Data Model constructs for creating and manipulating temporal objects.
  4. Support Objective 1 by enhancing the standard Object Definition Language (ODL).
  5. Support Objective 1 by extending the standard high level Object Query Language (OQL)
  6. Provide a temporal analysis and design methodology, by adapting existing methodologies with respect to temporal aspects.
  7. Validate the approach and TOOBIS products (TOODBMS and Methodology) by developing two demonstrator applications.
  8. Gain a competitive advantage with respect to both core ODBMS functionality, and Industrial size applications in the areas of MIS-EIS and health applications involving temporal and GIS functionality.
  9. Generalise applications of TOOBIS and investigate marketing potential in other industrial sectors.
 

Paris 1 contributions

The contribution of the University of Paris 1 was to develop an approach adapting an existing method by extending it with temporal features in order to provide a temporal analysis and design methodology. The TOOBIS method is coming from REMORA and O* methods. It aims at designing temporal database application before its development in the TOOBIS Temporal Object Oriented DBMS. Its main advantages are to
(1) provide a lot of advanced design features with only one model to design the structural and the behavioral aspects of the application and
(2) guide the development of the application in the TOOBIS TOODBMS from the conceptual schema.
 

The Consortium

 References

[Souveyet98a], [Deneckere98], [Souillard98], [Sotiropoulou98]


 

Participants on Web

The TOOBIS site