TOOBIS - Temporal Object-Oriented Databases in Information Systems

Project Description

TOOBIS is an EEC-funded project of the ESPRIT-IV framework. TOOBIS aims to the development of a competitive Temporal Object Oriented Database Management System that will support the representation and querying of bitemporal data. It will also develop an innovative conceptual modelling methodology, for temporal applications. In that respect TOOBIS contributes to the ease of access to information, by extending the core functionality of DBMSs. Its objectives are the following:

  1. Extend the core functionality offered by the O2 OODBMS, by supporting both valid and transaction time, being compatible with standards of ODMG and forthcoming SQL-3 standard definitions.
  2. Comply with evolving ODBMS standards, participate and influence standards definition groups.
  3. Extend the functionality of O2 OODBMS, providing the Data Model constructs for creating and manipulating temporal objects.
  4. Support Objective 1 by enhancing the standard Object Definition Language (ODL).
  5. Support Objective 1 by extending the standard high level Object Query Language (OQL)
  6. Provide a temporal analysis and design methodology, by adapting existing methodologies with respect to temporal aspects.
  7. Validate the approach and TOOBIS products (TOODBMS and Methodology) by developing two demonstrator applications.
  8. Gain a competitive advantage with respect to both core ODBMS functionality, and Industrial size applications in the areas of MIS-EIS and health applications involving temporal and GIS functionality.
  9. Generalise applications of TOOBIS and investigate marketing potential in other industrial sectors.

The consortium has chosen Object Orientation as the foundation technology, as it is a leading edge technology, which will increase its share in the database market. This may occur, either directly, by the increase of market share of pure OODBMSs, or indirectly, by the incorporation of Object Oriented (OO) concepts in RDBMS technology. O2 OODBMS was chosen as the implementation platform mainly for two reasons. Firstly because it is the market leader of OODBMSs in Europe an the third in market share world-wide. Secondly, because existing RDBMSs lack object oriented functionality and only plan to incorporate them in the near future. Also, the industrial end users participating in the consortium appeal to a methodological approach to temporal applications development as well as availability of appropriate TDBMSs to support the effort.

TOOBIS will exploit the expertise from involvement in previous research projects and follow existing (ODMG-93) or emerging standards (ODMG-95, SQL3) as much as possible. The theoretical basis of TOOBIS will benefit from the results of the ORES project at the logical level of temporal extension to DBMSs. ORES implemented the temporal functionality based on the relational data model and on top of an RDBMS. The project TOOBIS will port this functionality to an object data model and implement it in O2 OODBMS. It will also, exploit the results of other projects such as REMORA, RUBIS, O*, and Business Class on the methodological aspects of analysing and designing temporal databases.