Transparent Dynamic Database Evolution from Java

With the increasing provision by the ODMG standard and commercial OODBMS products for transparent access to the traditional database functionality of an OODBMS from Java, there is a need to provide Java programmers transparent access to advanced functionality such as dynamic evolution. This paper proposes a transparent API for the purpose. The API is based on a high-level object-oriented model. The application programmer interacts with the high-level model instead of interacting with the lower level model of the particular OODBMS. The various dynamic evolution features operate within the constraints of the Java type system.