An Evaluation of Dynamic Electronic Catalog Models in Relational Database Systems

Abstract

Electronic catalogs are electronic representations about products and services in the electronic commerce environment and require diverse and flexible schemas. Although relational database systems seem to be an obvious choice for their storage, traditional designs of relational schemas do not support electronic catalogs in the most effective ways. Therefore, new models for managing diverse and flexible schemas in relational databases are required for such systems. Proposed in this paper are several models for electronic catalogs using relational tables, and an experimental evaluation of their efficiency. The results of this study can be put to practical use and are, in fact, being applied in the design of a commercial software product.