Data migration in column family database evolution using MDE

Abstract

When software requirements change, databases used by an application may evolve, including the database models (conceptual model and schema), which may require data migrations to maintain data integrity. In some databases such as NoSQL column family databases, the tables of the database often store repeated data, as schema denormalization is encouraged to achieve the best performance. This makes data integrity maintenance more complex, as a single conceptual model change may trigger several changes in the schema. In this work, we propose using a model-driven engineering approach named MoDEvo for data migration in NoSQL column family databases to maintain data integrity after the schema evolves. Using a motivating example as a case study from an open source project that requires data migration, we describe MoDEvo and use it to illustrate how MoDEvo determined these data migrations