Treffer: Query Language for Complex Database Objects

In this thesis, we address the problems of the design of an object algebra whose operations are intended to form the basis of OVAL, a functional query language for objects. The proposed algebra is closely related to the object-oriented database model. The algebra and the corresponding functional language are designed to be suitable for integration with an object-oriented database programming language. The main contributions of the work are: (i) the definition of the object algebra, (ii) the design of a functional operation for querying nested components of complex objects, (iii) the definition of a set of operations for querying database schema, and finally, (iv) the design of a procedure for static type checking of OVAL queries. In order to provide the basis for the definition of the object algebra operations, we describe the object-oriented model in a formal manner. The proposed object-oriented model formalization unifies the schema and the instances of the database. Consequently, th.