Binary relationship model and metadata management ?

[Uwe Diekmann]

Hallo,

i am looking for information about something called
Binary Relationship Model (BR-model). ( Codd mentioned this
model in his book about RM V2 and regarded it as not very
useful because of the decomposition of relations. This can
lead to waste of memory and to many joins, which require much
computing power.) I need references and more information.

I think that the decomposition of relations could be i nice
thing in technical databases, if there is a metadata
system that represents the connection (or a layer) between
objects (entities) and the binary relations. Therefore my 2nd
question: Is there an existing metadata approach to this
subject ?

Thanks in advance.

********************die...@iw.uni-hannover.de*******************
* Uwe Diekmann Tel: INT-49-511-762-3906
* Institut fuer Werkstoffkunde FAX: INT-49-511-762-5245
* Universtitaet Hannover
* Appelstrasse 11 A
* W 3000 Hannnover 1; Germany
*****************************************************************

[Bob Zwanikken]

The Binaire Relationship Model is also known as NIAM (Nijssens' Information
Analysis Methodology). This is however a bad reference. NIAM is currently well
known as NIAM-ISDM. Natural language Info An Meth.- Info Systems Development Methodology. NIAM-ISDM has no restrictions on the number of roles in a relation-ship. Also a relationship can be extended to an object.
NIAM-ISDM is very powerfull and is truely a conceptuel analysis method. The
technique used in NIAM-ISDM to model information is called ISD (Information Structure Diagrams).
ISD is much more powerfull than ER(A); it is independent of the internal schema.ER is only suitable for Relational Databases, since every block is a table. Therfor ugly things as normalisation are to be done. NIAM has a gouping algorithm that produces 5 normal form database-schema in a simple manner.

Just don't even try to look at the Binairy Model. It is a drawing tool. Not a method.

- Bob

--
Bob Zwanikken (b...@cvi.ns.nl)
CVI - Infrastructuur en Logistiek CVI - Manufacturing and Logistics
Pustbus 2233 3500 GE Utrecht PO Box 2233
3500 GE Utrecht NL-3500 GE Utrecht

[John Cummins]

Hi,

Professor Peter King at Birkbeck College, University of London (Malet St London) has
done a lot of work with the binary relational model. He (and a bunch of students) has
produced a DBMS based on the model called fdl which runs on sun kit. If you give me a
day or two I shall find out some more details.

John Cummins
BT Research Centre
Martlesham Heath
United Kingdom

email: jo...@muppet.bt.co.uk