Using Object-Oriented Principles to Optimize Update Propagation to Materialized Views

Harumi A. Kuno, Elke A. Rundensteiner

Abstract: View materialization is known to be a valuable technique for performance optimization in relational databases, and much work has been done addressing the problem of consistently maintaining relational views under update operations. However, little progress has been made thus far regarding the topic of view materialization in object-oriented databases (OODBs). In this paper, we demonstrate that there are several significant differences between the relational and object-oriented paradigms that can be exploited when addressing the object-oriented view materialization problem. We use the subsumption relationships between classes to identify branches of classes to which we do not need to propagate updates. Similarly, we use encapsulated interfaces combined with the fact that any unique database property is inherited from a single location to provide a "registration/notification" service for optimizing incremental view updates. We also report results from the experimental studies we have run on the MultiView system measuring the impact of these optimization strategies.