MANAGING INTERDEPENDENCIES AMONG OBJECTS IN FEDERATED DATABASES

An important issue to be addressed in supporting information sharing in federated database systems is the management of the inherent interdependencies among data in different databases. In particular, data in such databases can (implicitly and/or explicitly) exhibit various forms of interdependence, such as existence, structural, and functional/behavioral dependencies. The ability to capture and systematically support such intrinsic interdependency relationships is essential. In this paper we analyze these interdependencies in the context of an object-oriented database federation, and describe how object-oriented concepts and mechanisms can be employed to accommodate them