OODB path-method generator (PMG) using precomputed access relevance

A path-method is used as a mechanism in object-oriented databases (OODBs) to retrieve or to update information relevant to one class that is stored with some other class. A path-method is a method which traverses from one class through a chain of connections between classes to access information at another class. It is a difficult task for a user to write path-methods, because it may require comprehensive knowledge of many classes of the conceptual schema, while a typical user has often incomplete or even inconsistent knowledge of the schema. In this paper we discuss the Path-Method Generator (PMG) system based on precomputed access relevance, which generates path-methods automatically according to a naive user's requests. Our experiments show that the traversal algorithm of PMG is a very successful tool for aiding the user with the difficult task of querying and updating a large OODB.