Beyond Relations: A Case for Elevating to the Entity-Relationship Abstraction

Summary: Argues RDBMSs must elevate the entity-relationship (ER) abstraction beyond object-relational to restore logical data independence and enable higher-level innovation instead of acting as mere storage. Presents ErbiumDB prototype exploring ER-first internals and key research challenges: mapping, optimization, evolution, and tooling. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: hb5112b54ba60e4d1
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2025
Pagerank: 6.8703153e-05
Overall Rank: 3,989 | 73.19%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Amol Deshpande (University of Maryland)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{deshpande_cidr25,
        address = {Amsterdam, Netherlands},
        series = {{CIDR} '25},
        title = {{Beyond Relations: A Case for Elevating to the Entity-Relationship Abstraction}},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {Conference} on {Innovative} {Data} {Systems} {Research}},
        author = {Deshpande, Amol},
        year = {2025}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 4 of 4 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
10,344	Semantic Data Modeling, Graph Query, and SQL, Together at Last?	2026	CIDR	4.9793485e-05
10,354	Database Research needs an Abstract Relational Query Language	2026	CIDR	4.9793485e-05
11,039	Return to the Boston Area After 50+ Years: What can we learn from VLDB 1975?	2026	VLDB	4.9793485e-05
11,371	Towards Principled, Practical Document Database Design	2025	VLDB	4.9793485e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 21 of 21 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
10	Extending the Data Base Relational Model to Capture More Meaning	1979	SIGMOD	0.00075944947
12	C-Store: A Column-oriented DBMS	2005	VLDB	0.00068998927
96	The Database Language GEM	1983	SIGMOD	0.00034286345
374	Storing and Querying Ordered XML Using a Relational Database System	2002	SIGMOD	0.00019707844
698	A Data Model and Query Language for EXODUS	1988	SIGMOD	0.00014687325
847	The Semantic Data Model: A Modelling Mechanism for Data Base Applications	1978	SIGMOD	0.00013507676
1,295	An Entity-based Database User Interface	1980	SIGMOD	0.00011139704
1,355	Principles of Dataset Versioning: Exploring the Recreation/Storage Tradeoff	2015	VLDB	0.0001092646
1,482	PG-Schema: Schemas for Property Graphs	2023	SIGMOD	0.00010538703
1,600	SQLGraph: An Efficient Relational-Based Property Graph Store	2015	SIGMOD	0.00010112271
2,073	Graceful Database Schema Evolution: the PRISM Workbench	2008	VLDB	9.0852947e-05
2,498	Compiling Mappings to Bridge Applications and Databases	2007	SIGMOD	8.3830999e-05
3,147	SQL Has Problems. We Can Fix Them: Pipe Syntax In SQL	2024	VLDB	7.5951285e-05
3,180	A Critique of Modern SQL And A Proposal Towards A Simple and Expressive Query Language	2024	CIDR	7.5639428e-05
3,198	Feral Concurrency Control: An Empirical Investigation of Modern Application Integrity	2015	SIGMOD	7.5442646e-05
6,438	Scalable Querying of Nested Data	2021	VLDB	5.7851309e-05
7,391	Object/Relational Mapping 2008: Hibernate and the Entity Data Model (EDM)	2008	SIGMOD	5.5376795e-05
7,601	Query Containment in Entity SQL (Extended Abstract)	2013	SIGMOD	5.4868602e-05
7,859	BullFrog: Online Schema Evolution via Lazy Evaluation	2021	SIGMOD	5.4392412e-05
9,680	ADO.NET Entity Framework: Raising the Level of Abstraction in Data Programming	2007	SIGMOD	5.1429274e-05
10,026	Sypse: Privacy-first Data Management through Pseudonymization and Partitioning	2021	CIDR	5.0934585e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	4,357	Toward Logical Data Independence: A Relational Query Language without Relations	1982	SIGMOD
2	5,771	Database Technology for the Masses: Sub-Operators as First-Class Entities	2021	VLDB
3	13,550	A Systematic Approach to Relational Database Theory	1982	SIGMOD
4	3,287	Comprehensive Approach to the Design of Relational Database Schemes	1984	VLDB
5	5,074	A Relationship Mechanism for a Strongly Typed Object-Oriented Database Programming Language	1991	VLDB
6	6,602	Research Directions in Object-Oriented Database Systems	1990	PODS
7	14,844	A Practical Design Methodology for the Implementation of IMS Databases, Using the Entity-Relationship Model	1980	SIGMOD
8	9,284	Incremental Reorganization of Relational Databases	1987	VLDB
9	14,843	Entity-Relationship Approach to the Conceptual Schema Design	1980	SIGMOD
10	183	On Extending the Functions of a Relational Database System	1982	SIGMOD