Beyond Relations: A Case for Elevating to the Entity-Relationship Abstraction

2025/05/06 by Amol Deshpande, Deshpande, Amol · 3 citations
Computer Science · #Databases (cs.DB) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Semantic Web and Ontologies

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.03536

openalex publication_date 2025/05/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Spurred by a number of recent trends, we make the case that the relational database systems should urgently move beyond supporting the basic object-relational model and instead embrace a more abstract data model, specifically, the entity-relationship model. We argue that the current RDBMSs don't inherently support sufficient "logical" data independence, and that is relegating the database systems to the role of a backend storage system, away from where significant innovation is both happening and is still needed. We present the design of a prototype system (ErbiumDB) that we are building to explore these issues, and discuss some of the key research challenges.

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