Roles , Views and Viewpoints in Object-Oriented Databases

During the past years, the most of research works in object-oriented databases propose to enrich the monolithic vision of the traditional approach in which an object belongs to one and only one hierarchy class. They deal with the object multiple representation and evolution. In particular, role, view and viewpoint mechanisms have been intensively studied. In this paper, we propose the integration of the three concepts within a unique data model. This integration gives the model flexibility and great modelling power. Also, it permits a novel dimension of data description that is the distribution.