Criteria for assessing object-relational quality

Object-relational databases combine traditional relational database design with object-oriented features. Although object-relational features have been available to database designers for years, the best way to use these features has not been fully evaluated. This approach for assessing the relative quality of object-relationaldatabase designs draws on approaches for measuring quality in software engineering and conceptual modelling. This paper proposes a set of four criteria to help assess whether a particular design displays the characteristics of quality: integrity, simplicity, flexibility and seamlessness. The criteria are set in a context ofa framework for assessing quality that considers the viewpoints and priorities of different stakeholders in the design: for example, Systems Analysts, Business Analysts, Application Developers and Database Administrators. Future work will address the issue of whether these criteria are sufficient to distinguish betweengood and bad O-R designs. Once the framework has been used, the criteria they will be revisited to examine whether they have been useful in deriving judgements about the overall quality of the designs. Furthermore, the criteria will be assessed to find whether they could be useful in a wider context.