Fibrations and universal view updatability

Maintainability and modifiability of information system software can be enhanced by the provision of comprehensive support for views, since view support allows application programs to continue to operate unchanged when the underlying information system is modified. Supporting views depend upon a solution to the view update problem. This paper presents a new treatment of view updates for formally specified semantic data models based on the category theoretic sketch data model. The sketch data model has been the basis of a number of successful major information system consultancies. We define view updates by a universal property in models of the formal specification, and explain why this indeed gives a complete and correct treatment of view updatability, including a solution to the view update problem. However, a definition of updatability which is based on models causes some inconvenience in applications, so we prove that in a variety of circumstances updatability is guaranteed independently of the current model. This is done first with a very general criterion, and then for some specific cases relevant to applications. We include some details about the sketch data model, noting that it involves extensions of algebraic data specification techniques.

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