A query service for a software engineering database system

The PCTE interfaces define a Public Tool Interface intended to serve as a basis for the construction of integrated software engineering environments (SEEs). The interfaces include Object Management System (OMS) services that manage the data repository of the environment. The OMS is based on a binary Entity-Relationship model. This paper describes a query service constructed on the PCTE interfaces. Following a brief summary of the OMS features that are necessary to understand the paper, we describe the requirements and design objectives for a query service in an integrated SEE, the basic model for our solution, and then review the facilities of the service. The paper also contains a comparison with other work on queries on E-R and object-oriented databases. The paper's conclusions indicate the differences that exist between requirements and characteristics for query services on SEE data repositories and those for other databases. It shows, for example, how assumptions about data availability and accessibility that are often made for query services are not appropriate for SEE data repositories.