Why is this necessary?
Limitations in existing storage solutions
RDBMS
RDBMS is a short for Relational Database Management System. They most
follow the SQL-99
standard. A
number of limitations defer the eChronicle style storage system.
- Arrays violate the rules of First Normal Form (1NF) required for a
relational database, which say that the tables have no repeating
groups in any column. A repeating group is a data structure that is
not scalar; examples of repeating groups include linked lists,
arrays, records, and even tables within a column. The reason they
are not allowed is that a repeating group would have to define a
column like a data type. There is no obvious way to JOIN a column
that contains an array to other columns, since there are no
comparison operators or conversion rules. There is no obvious way to
display or transmit a column that contains an array as a result set
(Joe Celko: SQL for Smarties (Ch. 25, p575)).
- Relational databases and XML semistructured information storage
systems are proper to store the static data storage and retrieval
but not proper to handle dynamic data changes. In other words, whole
possible changes of model status should be predefined and fixed on
the definite rules. This property makes implementing state machines
with conditional probabilities, in which a status of one node
changes to next phase by a probability, very difficult.
Without the correct logs of the information from its birth to successive
revision the ownership of the information can not be clearly declared.
Events logging associated with its information will assess this topic
distinctively.
Features of the EFIM
- Data model independent storage system: The back-end storage system
is independent to the data model. It may be constructed by a
specific data model but can be interpreted by other data models
freely. As an extreme case, even if loose the data model which is
used to archive data sets are lost, it is possible to recover the
old data model from the data set by navigating through their event
connection. (Click demo – It showed existing data models and
collected data sets, then a data model is completely dropped off.
Finally, the automatic data model reconstruction will be shown.
- What is different with XML?
- Data-type free
- Dynamic models and their inter-relationship representation
- Causal data representation
- Semantics