The impact of column-orientation on the quality of class inheritance mapping specifications

Class inheritance is a powerful concept in object-oriented modeling. Persisting objects from an inheritance hierarchy into a relational database is not straight forward, because the concept of inheritance is not supported by relational data stores. An accepted solution are object-relational mapping strategies. The problem is that each strategy varies in terms of its non-functional characteristics e.g., usability, maintainability, efficiency. Software developers base the decision, what mapping strategy to chose, on experience and best practices. Most of these best practices can be found in programming guides for object-relational mapping frameworks or books and publications of experienced software architects. However, these best practices are based on experiences with row-oriented database systems. With the advent of new database technologies, such as column-stores, these best practices become obsolete. In my Ph.D. thesis I am investigating the influence of a database's data layout (row- vs. column) on the non-functional characteristics of object-relational mapping strategies.