Towards a Theory of Refinement for Data Migration

We develop a theoretical framework for refining transformations occurring in the process of data migration. A legacy kernel can be discovered at a high-level abstraction which consolidates heterogeneous data sources in a legacy system. We then show that migration transformations are specified via the composition of two subclasses of transformations: property-preserving transformations and property-enhancing transformations at flexible levels of abstraction. By defining a refinement scheme with the notions of correct refinements for property-preserving and property-enhancing transformations, we are able to stepwise refine migration transformations and to prove the correctness of refinements. The result of this paper lays down a formal foundation for investigating data migration.

[1]  Erhard Rahm,et al.  A survey of approaches to automatic schema matching , 2001, The VLDB Journal.

[2]  Gregory H. Harris,et al.  Review of "Abstract state machines: a method for high-level system design and analysis" by Egon Börger and Robert Stärk. Springer-Verlag 2003. , 2004, SOEN.

[3]  Wenfei Fan,et al.  Keys with Upward Wildcards for XML , 2001, DEXA.

[4]  Bernhard Thalheim,et al.  Evolution and Migration of Information Systems , 2011, Handbook of Conceptual Modeling.

[5]  Martin Otto,et al.  The expressive power of fixed-point logic with counting , 1996, Journal of Symbolic Logic.

[6]  Egon Börger,et al.  Abstract State Machines. A Method for High-Level System Design and Analysis , 2003 .

[7]  Bing Wu,et al.  Legacy System Migration : A Legacy Data Migration Engine , 1997 .

[8]  Leon J. Osterweil,et al.  Proceedings of the 16th international conference on Software engineering , 1994, ICSE 1994.

[9]  Bernhard Thalheim,et al.  Entity-relationship modeling - foundations of database technology , 2010 .

[10]  Klaus-Dieter Schewe,et al.  A Customised ASM Thesis for Database Transformations , 2010, Acta Cybern..

[11]  David Lorge Parnas,et al.  Software aging , 1994, Proceedings of 16th International Conference on Software Engineering.

[12]  Jane Grimson,et al.  A Survey of Research into Legacy System Migration , 2007 .

[13]  David A. Schmidt.  Binary Relations for Abstraction and Refinement , 2000 .

[14]  Patrick Cousot,et al.  Abstract interpretation: a unified lattice model for static analysis of programs by construction or approximation of fixpoints , 1977, POPL.

[15]  Professor Dr. Bernhard Thalheim.  Entity-Relationship Modeling , 2000, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

[16]  Neil Immerman,et al.  Expressibility as a complexity measure: results and directions , 1987, SCT.

[17]  Gilles Dowek,et al.  Principles of programming languages , 1981, Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science.

[18]  Bing Wu,et al.  Legacy Information Systems: Issues and Directions , 1999, IEEE Softw..

[19]  Gerhard Schellhorn.  Verification of ASM Refinements Using Generalized Forward Simulation , 2001, J. Univers. Comput. Sci..

[20]  Qing Wang,et al.  Logical Foundations of Database Transformations for Complex-Value Databases , 2010 .

[21]  Hubert Comon,et al.  Tree automata techniques and applications , 1997 .

[22]  Egon Börger,et al.  The ASM Refinement Method , 2003, Formal Aspects of Computing.

[23]  Tharam S. Dillon,et al.  Modeling and Transformation of Object-Oriented Conceptual Models into XML Schema , 2001, DEXA.