A Generic Database Schema for CIDOC-CRM Data Management

Database management currently assumes a relative stability of database structures and supports user viewpoints through a number of views. New users must either adopt their data demand to existing views or issue a request for support of their demands. The support for the second option is not feasible whenever user communities often change or users agile change their viewpoints. Further applications continuously evolve. This evolution also results in change requests to database structures, to database views and to database features. We support evolution of databases and changes of user viewpoints by a generic database system, and automatic generation of generation of views. This approach supports modification of the database according to the special viewpoint of users. Queries issued by the user are transformed to generic database queries. Results that are computed for these queries are translated back to user-specific answers.