{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,21]],"date-time":"2026-01-21T23:46:57Z","timestamp":1769039217000,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":19,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,27]],"date-time":"2019-11-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1574812800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Data"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Relational database has been the de-facto database choice in most IT applications. In the last decade there has been increasing demand for applications that have to deal with massive and un-normalized data. To satisfy the demand, there is a big shift to use more relaxed databases in the form of NoSQL databases. Alongside with this shift, there is a need to have a structured methodology to transform existing data in relational database (RDB) to NoSQL database. The transformation from RDB to NoSQL database has become more challenging because there is no current standard on NoSQL database. The aim of this paper is to propose transformation rules of RDB Schema to various NoSQL database schema, namely document-based, column-based and graph-based databases. The rules are applied based on the type of relationships that can appear in data within a database. As a proof of concept, we apply the rules into a case study using three NoSQL databases, namely MongoDB, Cassandra, and Neo4j. A set of queries is run in these databases to demonstrate the correctness of the transformation results. In addition, the completeness of our transformation rules are compared against existing work.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/data4040148","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,27]],"date-time":"2019-11-27T11:07:00Z","timestamp":1574852820000},"page":"148","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":20,"title":["Transformation of Schema from Relational Database (RDB) to NoSQL Databases"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"4","author":[{"given":"Obaid","family":"Alotaibi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, College of Science and Arts, Sajir Campus, Shaqra University, Sajir City 11951, Saudi Arabia"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8218-2343","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Eric","family":"Pardede","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Melbourne Campus, La Trobe University, Victoria 3086, Australia"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2593","DOI":"10.1016\/j.procs.2015.05.367","article-title":"A Framework for Migrating Relational Datasets to NoSQL","volume":"51","author":"Rocha","year":"2015","journal-title":"Procedia Comput. Sci."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Stanescu, L., Brezovan, M., and Burdescu, D.D. (2016, January 11\u201314). Automatic mapping of MySQL databases to NoSQL MongoDB. Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), Gdansk, Poland.","DOI":"10.15439\/2016F45"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"De Freitas, M.C., Souza, D.Y., and Salgado, A.C. (2016, January 25\u201328). Conceptual Mappings to Convert Relational into NoSQL Databases. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS Vol.1), Roma, Italy.","DOI":"10.5220\/0005836301740181"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"50","DOI":"10.1016\/j.datak.2017.01.001","article-title":"Big data technologies and Management: What conceptual modeling can do","volume":"108","author":"Storey","year":"2017","journal-title":"Data Knowl. Eng."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1016\/j.is.2016.07.009","article-title":"Persisting big-data: The NoSQL landscape","volume":"63","author":"Corbellini","year":"2017","journal-title":"Inf. Syst."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"94","DOI":"10.1016\/j.procs.2016.08.284","article-title":"A classification of NoSQL data stores based on key design characteristics","volume":"97","author":"Makris","year":"2016","journal-title":"Procedia Comput. Sci."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"117","DOI":"10.1016\/j.is.2013.05.002","article-title":"Uniform access to NoSQL systems","volume":"43","author":"Atzeni","year":"2014","journal-title":"Inf. Syst."},{"key":"ref_8","unstructured":"Robinson, I., Webber, J., and Eifrem, E. (2015). Graph Databases: New Opportunities for Connected Data, O\u2019Reilly Media, Inc."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Pardede, E., Rahayu, J.W., and Taniar, D. (2004, January 5\u20137). Mapping Methods and Query for Aggregation and Association Relationship in Object-Relational Database using Collection. Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing (ITCC), Las Vegas, NV, USA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ITCC.2004.1286513"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"370","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infsof.2005.12.015","article-title":"Object-Relational Complex Structures for XML Storage","volume":"48","author":"Pardede","year":"2006","journal-title":"Inf. Softw. Technol. J."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Li, C. (2010, January 16\u201318). Transforming relational database into HBase: A case study. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering and Service Sciences (ICSESS), Beijing, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICSESS.2010.5552465"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chen, J.K., and Lee, W.Z. (2017, January 8\u201310). Data conversion from RDB to HBase. Proceedings of the IEEE 8th International Conference on Awareness Science and Technology (iCAST), Taichung, Taiwan.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICAwST.2017.8256439"},{"key":"ref_13","unstructured":"Serrano, D., Han, D., and Stroulia, E. (July, January 27). From relations to multi-dimensional maps: Towards an SQL-to HBase transformation methodology. Proceedings of the IEEE 8th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD), New York, NY, USA."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Liyanaarachchi, G., Kasun, L., Nimesha, M., Lahiru, K., and Karunasena, A. (2016, January 16\u201319). MigDB-relational to NoSQL mapper. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation for Sustainability (ICIAfS), Galle, Sri Lanka.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICIAFS.2016.7946576"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"De Virgilio, R., Maccioni, A., and Torlone, R. (2013, January 23). Converting relational to graph databases. Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Graph Data Management Experiences and Systems, New York, NY, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/2484425.2484426"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Wardani, D.W., and Kiing, J. (2014, January 21\u201323). Semantic mapping relational to graph model. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer, Control, Informatics and Its Applications (IC3INA), Bandung, Indonesia.","DOI":"10.1109\/IC3INA.2014.7042620"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"De Freitas, M.C., Souza, D.Y., and Salgado, A.C. (2016, January 25\u201328). Conceptual Mapping to Convert Relational into NoSQL Databases. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS), Rome, Italy.","DOI":"10.5220\/0005836301740181"},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rocha, L., Vale, F., Cirilo, E., Barobosa, D., and Mourao, F. (2015, January 1\u20133). A Framework for Migrating Relational Datasets to NoSQL. Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS), Reykjav\u00edk, Iceland.","DOI":"10.1016\/j.procs.2015.05.367"},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"111","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2016.02.002","article-title":"Data adapter for querying and transformation between SQL and NoSQL database","volume":"65","author":"Liao","year":"2016","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."}],"container-title":["Data"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2306-5729\/4\/4\/148\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T13:38:02Z","timestamp":1760189882000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2306-5729\/4\/4\/148"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,27]]},"references-count":19,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,12]]}},"alternative-id":["data4040148"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/data4040148","relation":{},"ISSN":["2306-5729"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2306-5729","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,11,27]]}}}