A Formal Definition for ObjectRelational Database Metrics

Abstract: Object-relational databases add to the relational model the possibility of working with new and complex data and applications. One widely accepted mechanism for assuring the quality of an object-relational database is the use of metrics and it is important to formalize the metrics for having a better understanding of their definitions. Metrics formalization assures the reliable repetition of their computation and facilitates the automation of metrics collection. In this paper we present the formalization of a set of metrics defined for object-relational databases described using an ontology we have created for the new SQL:2003. The ontology has been represented using UML and the definition of the metrics has been done using OCL (Object-Constraint Language) which is part of the UML 2.0 standard. 1