SMAWL (Master Thesis)

Schema Mapping Application Writer Language

Compiler Components

In the database world there is one task to find schema correspondences and rewrite queries on one schema into a query on the other schema. It gets harder if the elements and relations do not fit well in the expressiveness of mere query rewriting. Instead we do materializations of a copy of the real entries and let the queries work directly on the database content.

The materialization has its own way of mapping the elements and may include lots of transformations and corrections and optimizations in the process. Instead of writing them again and again for each mapping in the view, we want to let them be generated from a description of the schema correspondences. This task is a compiler that creates a schema mapping application.

As a foundation we need a way to describe characteristics of the objects and functions involved. We attempt that with a language itself than can express Schema Mapping Applications and which can be interpreted by compilers to write such resulting programs. That language is called "SMAWL" in here and it is almost tightely coupled with the innards of a compiler system.