摘要 |
A data architecture and method that supports shared access to data among multiple applications. The architecture includes sets of data entities, data properties, data relationships, and data mappings. Each data entity has a defined data property. The data relationships define relationships between data entities, such as RDBMS relationships and flat file relationships. The data mappings, along with associated data access mechanisms, provide a means for mapping data from one or more existing data entities corresponding to existing applications into data entities for new applications and new data entities for existing applications. The novel data architecture of the invention breaks apart the one-to-one linking between architecture elements imposed by conventional data architectures, thereby enabling applications to not only share access to the same data, but to define their own relationships and usage for such data.
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