RIDL: a tool for the computer-assisted engineering of large databases in the presence of integrity constraints

Tools and methods that transform higher level formalisms into logical database designs become very important. Rarely if ever do these transformations take into account integrity constraints existing in the "conceptual" model. Yet these become essential if one is forced to introduce redundancies for reasons of e.g. query efficiency. We therefore adopted the Binary Relationship Model (or "NIAM") that is rich in constraints and built a flexible tool, RIDL*, that graphically captures NIAM semantic networks, analyzes them and then transforms them into relational designs (normalized or not), under the control of a database engineer assisted by a rule base. This is made possible by a rule-driven implementation of a new, stepwise synthesis process, and its benefits are illustrated by its treatment of e.g. subtypes. RIDL* is operational at several industrial sites in Europe and the U.S. on sizeable database projects.