Implementing Associations among Classes in an Environment of Active Databases

Abstract

The association is a native concept from relational databases, one that has been adapted to object oriented (OO) modelling. It is an interesting operator used to describe links among objects of a system, commonly included in the most popular diagram-based OO methodologies. However, those methodologies sometimes present a lack of formality that may undermine its use. In this paper we formalize the semantics of associations. Firstly, we will describe an OO model based on different kinds of constraints. Some of them will be especially useful for describing the semantics of associations. Finally, we will present some remarks about implementation by means of triggers, a new feature incorporated in databases to specify an inner active behavior.