Object-Oriented Database Design using UML and ODMG

Object Oriented Databases (I) Lecture 9

Advanced Databases

Dr. Akhtar Ali School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences

Lecture outline

Database Design Process Object-Oriented concepts

Objects, Classes Attributes, Operations, Associations Encapsulation, Inheritance

Object-Oriented Data Modelling

Identifying

Classes, attributes, and operations. Associations among classes

Drawing class diagrams conceptual model

Introduction to ODMG 3.0 (the standard for ObjectOriented Databases)

Advanced Databases (CM036) Lecture # 9: Object-Oriented Databases (I)

References

Database Systems 4th Edition (chapters 25 to 27) by Connolly & Begg, Addison Wesley, 2005 Database Design for Smarties using UML for Data Modelling (chapter 13) by Robert J. Muller, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1999 (specialist text in library) Fundamental of Database Systems 5th Edition (chapters 20 & 21) by R. Elmasri and S. B. Navati, Addison Wesley, 2007 Object Database Standard: ODMG 3.0 by R.G.G. Cattell, Douglas K. Barry, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2000 (reference in library) Object-Oriented Database Design clearly explained by Jan L. Harrington. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2000 (reference in library)

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Database Design Process

Application Domain or Universe of Discourse
using ER model or UML

Data Modelling

Conceptual Model
using Data Model of the target DBMS

Logical Database Design

Logical Model
DBMS specific resource-based optimization

Physical Database Design

Physical Model

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Logical/Physical database design

Relational database design
Mapping onto Relations (no operations) Normalization & Physical design

SQL table definitions

RDBMS

UML class diagram

Mapping onto Relations and Object types

Object-Relational database design

Normalization & Physical design

Extended-SQL table definitions

ORDBMS

Mapping directly onto ODL classes

Object-Oriented database schema in ODL

Optimization

OODBMS

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Object-oriented concepts

Objects

Objects represent real world entities, concepts, and tangible as well as intangible things.

For example a person, a drama, a licence System generated Never changes in the lifetime of the object State: attributes (name, address, birthDate of a person) Behaviour: operations (age of a person is computed from birthDate and current date)

Every object has a unique identifier (OID).

An object is made of two things:

Objects are categorized by their type or class. An object is an instance of a type or class.

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Object-oriented concepts

Classification

Classification is the process of grouping together objects which have common features. Programming languages have type systems and database systems have data models to classify object. The name used for the classificatory group of values is usually called class. Provides a template for constructing objects. Instances of a class have the same kind of data and identical behaviour.

Class

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Object-oriented concepts

An Example of a class in UML

Person
name: {firstName: string, middleName: string, lastName: string} address: string birthDate: date age(): Integer changeAddress(new Add: string) Class Name

Attributes

Operations

p:Pe rson
name: {Norm an, William , Pres ton} address: Stock port birthDate: 11-JUN-70

A Person object

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Object-oriented concepts

Encapsulation

Merger of data structure and operations.

Objects are composed of attributes (values) and operations (behaviour).

Person
name: {firstName: string, middleName: string, lastName: string} address: string birthDate: date age(): Integer changeAddress(newAdd: string)

Inheritance

A class can be defined in terms of another one. Person is super-class and Student is sub-class. Student class inherits attributes and operations of Person.

Student
regNum: string {PK} major: string register(C: Course): boolean Advanced Databases (CM036) Lecture # 9: Object-Oriented Databases (I)

Object-oriented concepts

An object system or object-based system is one that supports the modeling of data as abstract entities, with object identity. An object-oriented system is an object system in which all data is created as instances of classes which take part in an inheritance hierarchy. An object-oriented database management system (ODBMS) is a DBMS with an object-oriented logical data model. An object-oriented database (ODB) is a database made up of objects and managed by an ODBMS.

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Why ODBs?

ODBs are inevitable when:

Data is complex and variable in size Complex structural and compositional relationships Data is highly inter-related Data is evolving rapidly over time Richer data types

complex objects inheritance user extensibility not just a data model but also operations can be bundled together with data

Behaviour with data

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Complex Data

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ODBs are more Natural & Direct

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Comparison

RDBs vs. ORDBs

Very easy to compare because both are based on Relational Model. An RDB does not support abstract data types (ADT), all attribute values must be atomic and relations must be in first normal form (flat relation). An ORDB supports ADTs, attributes can be multivalued, and does not require first normal form. The underlying basic data structures of RDBs are much simpler but less versatile than ORDBs. ORDBs support complex data whereas RDBs dont. ORDBs support wide range of applications.

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Comparison continued

RDBs vs. ODBs.

Not very easy to compare because of philosophical differences. RDBs have only one construct i.e. Relation, whereas the type system of ODBs is much richer and complex. RDBs require primary keys and foreign keys for implementing relationships, ODBs simply dont. ODBs support complex data whereas RDBs dont. ODBs support wide range of applications. ODBs are much faster than RDBs but are less mature to handle large volumes of data. There is more acceptance and domination of RDBs in the market than that for ODBs.

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Comparison continued

ODBs vs. ORDBs.

Both support ADTs, collections, OIDs, and inheritance, though philosophically quite different. ORDBs extended RDBs whereas ODBs add persistence and database capabilities to OO languages. Both support query languages for manipulating collections and nested and complex data. SQL3 is inspired from OO concepts and is converging towards OQL (object query language). ORDBs carries all the benefits of RDBs, whereas ODBs are less benefited from the technology of RDBs. ODBs are seamlessly integrated with OOPLs with less mismatch in the type systems; ORDBs (SQL3) have quite different constructs than those of OOPLs when used in embedded form.

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Object-Oriented Data Modelling

Identification of objects in the system

Use UML analysis techniques e.g. use-cases, domain object models. Potential sources are:

Things, People, Roles, Organizations, Concepts Events, Processes, Places, Locations, etc

Devise an Object Model Grouping objects in Classes Identifying Attributes, Operations, Associations & Multiplicities Drawing class diagrams (of persistent classes)

Refining the object model

Reconciling classes

Revisiting the classes for inheritance Considering normalization of classes into simple classes Producing a big picture: a class diagram (perhaps without showing attributes and operations).
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OO Data Modelling: Example

Universe of Discourse: UNN Information System (UNN-IS)

Northumbria University has several academic departments. Each department provides one or more courses. Each course is composed of several modules, where a module may be part of more than one course. A student enrolls on a course and every year takes a specified number of modules. Note that several students are usually registered for a course. Every student is assigned a tutor at the start of the course, who is a lecturer in the department providing the course. A lecturer works for a department and usually teaches on several modules. Each module has a module tutor who is a lecturer. A lecturer may be a tutor of several modules.
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Class Diagram for UNN-IS

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ODMG 3 Object Database Standard

Object Database Management Group, formed 1991, intended to:

provide a standard where previously there was none support portability between products standardize model, querying and programming issues

Enables both designs and implementations to be ported between compliant systems Currently on version 3.0 Most vendor products are moving toward compliance; O2 is possibly the closest Vendors

Object Design,Objectivity, O2 Technology, POET, etc.

URL: www.odmg.org We will be using lambda-DB, a freely available ODBMS.

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ODMG Components

An architecture for OODBMS. An object model.

that will act as the logical model for all OODBMS and provide a level of interoperability. a concrete specification of the operations permitted over a schema defined in the data model. for posing ad-hoc queries but not for data definition or data manipulation.

A data definition language (ODL).

A query language (OQL).

Language bindings to existing OOPL (C++, Java, Smalltalk).

the object manipulation languages are the integration of a PL with the ODMG model, so the OOPLs get persistence and the OODB gets a flexible and standard DB programming language.
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An Architecture for OODBMS

Declaration in ODL or PL ODL Application Source code in PL using ODMG language binding

Declaration Pre-Processor
Metadata

PL Compiler

ODBMS Runtime

Application Binary

Linker

Data Access

Database

Running Application

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Object Model
1. Data Model

state and structure of data

Object identity Complex objects

2. Behaviour model

dynamics of the data operations on the data

Types and classes Inheritance hierarchies Encapsulation

Late binding/overriding Extensibility Completeness

3. Persistence model

the way the persistent and transient data is created & changes status naming and accessing objects
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4. Naming model

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Object Definition Language (ODL)

ODL is a specification language used to define the schema of an ODMG compliant database. ODL supports all semantic constructs of the ODMG object model. ODL is independent of any programming language, and hence provides means for the portability of database schema across complaint ODBMSs. The database schema may comprise of:

an ODL module (i.e. a higher level construct for grouping ODL specifications), some generic object types using interface, some concrete object types using class, and some literal types using struct, etc.
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Components of ODL (literal)

Literal Types

Define values (not having OIDs) Cannot stand alone i.e., must be embedded in objects Can be simple, collection and structured long, short, unsigned long, unsigned short, float, double, char, string, boolean, enum set: unordered that do not allow duplicates, bag: unordered that allow duplicates, list: ordered that allow duplicates, array: one-dimensional with variable length, and dictionary: unordered sequence of key-and-value pairs without duplicate keys
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Simple

Collection

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Components of ODL (literal)

Structured

date, time, timestamp, interval, and struct

For example
struct Name { string firstName, string middleName, string lastName };

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Components of ODL (object)

Object Types

interface: defines only the abstract behaviour of an object type.

Instances of an interface type cannot be created For example

interface Object {

...
boolean same_as(in Object other_object); Object copy(); void delete(); };

class: defines both abstract state and behaviour of an object type

Instances of a class can be created For example

class Person {

...
attribute Name name; attribute date birthDate; unsigned short age(); };
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Components of ODL (object)

State definition: Attributes

An attribute is defined for each attribute in a UML class or an ER entity type. An attribute belongs to a single class and is not a selfstanding object. The type of the values (domain) of an attribute is either object or literal (atomic, structured or collection). For example:

attribute set<string> qualifications; Defines an attribute of Lecturer class called qualifications the value of which is of type set<string>. lec.qualifications := set(BSc, MSc, PhD);

Consider that lec represents a Lecturer object then

Will assign the set of strings as a value to the qualifications attribute of the lecturer object.
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Components of ODL (object)

Behaviour definition: Operations

Objects may have certain behaviour that is specified as a set of operations. An object type includes an operation signature for each operation that specifies:

name of the operation, names and types of each argument, and the type of the returned value, if any.

For example: unsigned short age(); Defines the operation age without any arguments which return a value of type unsigned short.

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Components of ODL (object)

Extent and Keys

Besides, attributes and operations, a class definition may specify an extent and a unique key. Defines the set of all instances of a given class within an ODB. Deleting an object removes the object from the extent of a corresponding class.

Extent

Key

Uniquely identifies the instances of a class. The key concept is similar to the concept of primary key in RDBs, however, keys are not must in ODBs and are not used to implement relationships (as in the case of RDBs). A class must have an extent to have a key.
class Student (extent Students key regNum) {...}; Defines Students to be the extent and regNum to be a unique key of the Student class.

For example:

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Components of ODL (object)

Atomic object type

Any user-defined object type e.g., Person

Collection object types

Set: unordered that do not allow duplicates, Bag: unordered that allow duplicates, List: ordered that allow duplicates, Array: one-dimensional with variable length, and Dictionary: unordered sequence of key-and-value pairs without duplicate keys
Date, Time, Timestamp, Interval Set is a collection object type whereas set is a literal collection. Name is a type name whereas name is an attribute in the Person class definition.
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Structured object types

Watch out that ODL is case-sensitive e.g.,

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Mapping Class Diagrams into ODL

At this stage, we are dealing with classes, attributes, and operations.

Different associations and inheritance will be covered next. Each UML class becomes an ODL class. Each attribute or method in a UML class becomes an attribute or operation of an ODL class with appropriate types. Specify a suitable extent name unless the class diagram explicitly indicates otherwise. Specify a unique key if one or more attributes of a UML class are shown in bold or tagged with {PK}. For a composite attribute, specify a structure literal type.

Mapping (general case)

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Mapping UNN-IS class diagram into ODL

module UNN_IS1 { struct Name { string firstName; string middleName; string lastName; }; class Person { attribute Name name; attribute date birthDate; attribute char gender; unsigned short age(); }; class Lecturer (extent Lecturers key lecturerId) { attribute string lecturerId; attribute unsigned short room; attribute float salary; attribute date joinedOn; attribute set<string> qualifications; boolean teachModule(in Module M); };
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UNN-IS schema in ODL

class Department (extent Departments key deptNum) { attribute string deptNum; attribute string name; }; class Course (extent Courses key courseCode) { attribute string courseCode; attribute string name; }; class Module (extent Modules key moduleCode) { attribute string moduleCode; attribute string name; attribute unsigned short creditHours; };

class Student (extent Students key regNum) { attribute string regNum; attribute string major; boolean register(in Course C); boolean takeModule(in Module M); }; };
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UNN-IS COMPLETE CLASS DIAGRAM

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