Supporting functional aspects in relational databases

Fundamental concepts of information technology involve modularisation and encapsulation to handle inherent complexity and achieve some worthwhile system qualities, for example extensibility. This also applies to relational database systems, which have been playing a central role for the storage of application data for thirty years. However, some crosscutting concerns, for example the need to support internationalisation, interfere the process of modelling business objects and requirements as encapsulated logical units. This paper presents an approach to support cross-cutting concerns, also designated as functional aspects, in relational database systems. Thereby the concept pursues the intention to ensure important characteristics derived from the paradigm of aspect-oriented data management, particularly orthogonality and locality for functional aspects. Besides a relational data model, which is illustrated with a practical example, a XML structure for description of functional aspects is shown.