Unravelling Is-a Structures
Robert C. Goldstein, Veda C. Storey · Information Systems Research · 1992
Is-a relationships are widely recognized as conveying important information for database design. Although these relationships are implicitly hierarchical in nature, it is not uncommon to find collections of is-a relationships that form nonhierarchical structures. This paper formally defines is-a structures and classifies and interprets them. It illustrates how is-a structures can be used to identify possible database design errors or inefficiencies and to produce a database design that incorporates more of the semantics of an application.