Inheritance
Mapping inheritance hierarchies to relational databases means bridging the gap between object oriented and relational models. We start with a slightly modified example from [Bauer2015]:
Todo: Ref/Fig/billing.fig
Simplified Billing details example derived from [Bauer2015]. Notice
inherit.v1.BillingDetails being an abstract
parent class of two concrete classes
inherit.v1.CreditCard and
inherit.v1.BankAccount. The attribute
number applies both to bank account and credit card
payments.
Since the relational model lacks inheritance completely we have to implement a database schema ourselves. We subsequently explore three main approaches each of which having its own advantages and disadvantages.
