New cardinality notations and styles for modeling NoSQL document-store databases

Nowadays, data with several characteristics such as volume, variety etc. are generated daily, i.e. big data; its complexity cannot be overemphasized. On the other hand, schema free NoSQL databases keep emerging at almost the same phase to accommodate such data which cannot be efficiently managed by relational databases. However, this advancement brings about the challenge to model such flexible databases and capably manage big data despite its complexity. In doing that, developers tend to apply their relational modeling skills; nonetheless, such skills may not be directly compatible with NoSQL databases due to their schema flexibility, linear scalability among others. To alleviate this difficulty, we propose a standard for modeling NoSQL databases, document-stores in particular. The standard can be classified as i) cardinality notations, and ii) relationship modeling styles. With such standard, NoSQL document-store databases can be properly designed, automated database testing can be applied, and database performance and stability can be considerably improved. To achieve this, experimental method is applied. Also, exploratory approach was used to explore the available literature as well as experts consultations. All possible entity relationships were extracted, aggregated and compiled from a heuristic evaluation of existing 4 different document-store databases. An experiment was conducted to assess the effect of the proposed standards, results indicate a profound improvements in various aspect of document modeling when the proposed standards are adopted, especially in a large scaled databases.