Lightweight Data Sharing System based on Bidirectional Transformations

Abstract

Although the data sharing and synchronizing problems have been raised many years ago, they remain major issues in the database community. Still, some tools are provided to end-users in order to answer some of their needs. Yet, those platforms are most likely very complicated to handle notably because they ask the user to have very much knowledge, the user sometimes being the developer. Also, most of those systems do not really ensure data consistency. Our approach based on bidirectional transformations (BXs) resolves collaboration between companies having their own data structure in an easier way, improving the data consistency guarantees. This means that the user does not need to know the structure of the data other than his and the shared mappings, and will also never be asked to use pure code or database knowledge, limiting then the complexity. In addition to this, the system uses the bidirectional transformations properties to authorize or not editing the shared data as BiGUL has indeed such power for any user in the sharing group. Moreover, the system is extensible in the way that the user can easily join a sharing group, after providing to the bidirectional functions a mapping table, similar to a GLAV (Global-Local-As-View) mapping matching his local structure with the shared one.

Date of Award	18 Jun 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Namur
Supervisor	Pierre Yves Schobbens (Supervisor)