A framework for programming multiversion databases

摘要

Multiversion databases allow to represent in a database several states, or versions, of the real world entities. To take into account the new dimension introduced by versioning, new operations must be added to conventional database programming languages. In this paper, we describe such operations according to the DataBase Version (DBV) model, which allows an efficient management of as many versions as needed. Operations are first presented intuitively, then formal definitions of their syntax and their semantics is given. The work presented is considered as a syntactical framework for the development of sophisticated tools for design applications and configuration management. Special attention is paid to operations on complex object versions.