A process-oriented scientific database model
J. Michael Pratt, Maxine S. Cohen · ACM SIGMOD Record · 1992
A database model is proposed for organizing data that describes natural processes studied experimentally. Adapting concepts from object-oriented and temporal databases, this process-oriented scientific database model (POSDBM) identifies two data object types (independent and dependent variables) and two types of relationships (becomes-a and affects-a) between data objects. Successive versions of dependent variable objects are associated by the becomes-a relationship, while independent and dependent variable objects are associated by the affects-a relationship. Thus, a process can be viewed as a sequence of states (versions) of a dependent variable object whose attributes are affected over time by independent variable objects.