ORN Additive: Shrinking the Gap between Database Modeling and Implementation

ORN Additive is a prototype tool that was developed to show how the gap between database modeling and implementation can be reduced - more specifically, to show how associations defined in data models can be more directly mapped to and better supported by a relational database management system (DBMS) and done so in a powerful way. The "additive, " object relationship notation (ORN), allows database developers to extend the multiplicities given in UML class diagrams with "bindings " to model the semantics of a wide variety of association types. The tool, ORN Additive, lets them add this ORN to the foreign key constraints given for a Microsoft SQL Server database. This allows simple to complex association semantics to be included in the database\´s metadata and supported by the enhanced DBMS. Such support means that associations are implemented as modeled without DBMS users having to develop and maintain complex constraints, triggers, and/or procedural code.