A FRAMEWORK FOR METHOD EVOLUTION AND BEHAVIOR CONSISTENCY IN OBJECT-ORIENTED DATABASES
Zahir Tari, Xiaodong Li · International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering · 1996
This paper addresses the problem of method evolution in object-oriented databases. We propose a set of evolutionary operations that affect all parts of methods, the signature and the implementation. When a restructuring operation is applied to a schema, behavioral consistency is checked by constructing a proof of program correctness. Two levels of granularity for behavioral consistency are described. The first level relates to the evolution of methods in the context of class inheritance hierarchy and is concerned with the semantics of the polymorphism of methods. The second level relates to behavioral evolution in which the chain of calling relationships between methods is considered. Behavioral consistency is checked with a graph-based approach that deals with problems such as run-time type errors, side-effects, redundant methods, and unexpected behaviors.