Towards Generating Object-Relational Software Engineering Repositories

Nowadays the complexity of design processes, no matter which design domain (CAD, software engineering, etc.) they belong to, requires system support by means of so-called repositories. Repositories help managing design artifacts by offering adequate storage and manipulation services. One among several important features of a repository is version management. Current repository technology lacks in adequately exploiting database technology and in being adaptable to special application needs, e. g. support of application-specific notions of versioning. For that reason, we propose new repository technology, which is not completely generic (as current repositories are), but exploits generic methods for generating tailored repository managers. Furthermore, we show that new, object-relational database technology is extremely beneficial for that purpose.