MatBase Metadata Catalog Management

Abstract: MatBase is a prototype intelligent data and knowledge base management system based on the Relational, Entity-Relationship, and (Elementary) Mathematical Data Models. The latter distinguishes itself especially by its rich panoply of constraint types: 61, partitioned into three categories (set, containing 16 types, mapping, containing 44 types, and object) and eight subcategories (general set, dyadic relation, general mapping, autofunction, general function product, homogeneous binary function product, function diagram, and object). They provide database and software application designers with the tools necessary for capturing and enforcing all business rules from any subuniverse of discourse, thus guaranteeing database instances plausibility, a sine qua non condition of data quality. This mathematical data model also includes Datalog, thus making MatBase also a deductive, so a knowledge base system. Currently, there are two MatBase versions (one developed in MS Access and the other in MS .NET, using C# and SQL Server), used by two software developing companies, as well as during labs of our M.Sc. students with the Advanced Databases lectures and labs, both at the Ovidius University at Constanta and at the Department of Engineering in Foreign Languages, Computer Science Taught in English Stream of the Bucharest Polytechnic University. This paper presents MatBase's metadata catalog and its management.