Schema Evolution Publications and Media

This page collects the publications and associated media produced by the Schema Biographies research programme on relational database schema evolution. The research covers the evolution of entire schemata, individual tables, foreign-key structures, and the co-evolution of database schemata with source code. Entries link where available to papers, local project pages, datasets, software, presentation slides, and video material.

Video Presentations on Schema Evolution

There is a schema evolution channel in YouTube with commentaries of our papers.

Research Publications on Schema Evolution

Panos Vassiliadis, Alexandros Karakasidis. Time-Related Patterns of Schema Evolution. 28th International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT 2025), pp: 310-323, Barcelona, Spain, March 25-28, 2025

Focus: Identifies eight recurring timing patterns of schema evolution in 151 long-lived projects, organized into three broad families of focused, regular, and delayed change.
DOI: 10.48786/edbt.2025.25.
Related material: local page for Time-Related Patterns of Schema Evolution with paper and supplementary material; EDBT 2025 proceedings at OpenProceedings.

Fanis Giachos, Nikos Pantelidis, Christos Batsilas, Apostolos V. Zarras, Panos Vassiliadis. Parallel lives diagrams for co-evolving communities and their application to schema evolution. Companion Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2023): ER Forum, 7th SCME, Project Exhibitions, Posters and Demos, and Doctoral Consortium. Lisbon, Portugal, November 6-9, 2023.

Focus: Introduces parallel-lives diagrams for visualizing how multiple relational tables co-evolve across the successive versions of a database schema.
Related material: local page for Parallel lives diagrams for co-evolving communities and their application to schema evolution with paper and supplementary material.

Panos Vassiliadis, Fation Shehaj, George Kalampokis, Apostolos V. Zarras. Joint Source and Schema Evolution: Insights from a Study of 195 FOSS Projects. 26th International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT 2023), pp. 27–39, March 28 - March 31, Ioannina, Greece.

Focus: Studies 195 FOSS projects and shows that schema and source code rarely evolve in lockstep, with schema change typically concentrated disproportionately early in project life.
DOI: 10.48786/edbt.2023.03.
Related material: local page for Joint Source and Schema Evolution with paper, presentation, and related material.

Panos Vassiliadis, George Kalampokis. Taxa and super taxa of schema evolution and their relationship to activity, heartbeat and duration. Information Systems, Volume 110, 2022, 102109, ISSN 0306-4379, doi:10.1016/j.is.2022.102109.

Focus: Relates schema-evolution taxa and super-taxa to activity, heartbeat, and duration, showing that evolution is often concentrated in limited periods of project life.
DOI: 10.1016/j.is.2022.102109.
Related material: local page for Taxa and super taxa of schema evolution with paper and supplementary material.

Panos Vassiliadis. Profiles of Schema Evolution in Free Open Source Software Projects.37th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE '21), Chania, Crete, Greece, 19-22 April 2021.

Focus: Classifies the schema histories of 195 FOSS projects into recurring evolutionary profiles, with very limited or absent schema change proving more common than highly active evolution.
DOI: 10.1109/ICDE51399.2021.00008.
Related material: local page for Profiles of Schema Evolution in Free Open Source Software Projects with paper, presentation, data, code, and results.

Konstantinos Dimolikas, Apostolos V. Zarras, Panos Vassiliadis. A study on the effect of a table's involvement in foreign keys to its schema evolution. 39th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2020), Nov. 3-6, 2020, Vienna.

Focus: Shows that tables with more complex foreign-key topology tend to undergo more schema updates, while structurally simple tables are more often stable.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-62522-1_34.
Related material: local page for A Study on the Effect of a Table's Involvement in Foreign Keys to its Schema Evolution with paper, video presentation, and related material.

An 8' teaser video with just the key highlights, and a lengthier, full-fledged presentation of the paper

Panos Vassiliadis, Michail-Romanos Kolozoff, Maria Zerva, Apostolos V. Zarras. Schema evolution and foreign keys: a study on usage, heartbeat of change and relationship of foreign keys to table activity. Computing, Volume 101, Issue 10, pp 1431–1456, October 2019. 2019.

Focus: Studies foreign-key evolution at schema and table level, revealing widely different foreign-key usage practices and linking table connectivity in the Diachronic Graph to survival and update activity.
DOI: 10.1007/s00607-019-00702-x.
Related material: local page for Schema evolution and foreign keys with paper and supplementary material; Springer read-only version.

Panos Vassiliadis, Michail-Romanos Kolozoff, Maria Zerva, Apostolos V. Zarras. Schema Evolution and Foreign Keys: Birth, Eviction, Change and Absence. 36th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2017), pp. 106-119, Nov. 6th-9th, 2017, Valencia Spain.

Focus: Examines the birth, removal, change, and absence of foreign keys across evolving database schemata, exposing markedly different practices in how projects maintain referential structure.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-69904-2_9.
Related material: local page for Schema Evolution and Foreign Keys: Birth, Eviction, Change and Absence with paper, video presentation, and related material.

Schema Evolution and Gravitation to Rigidity: a tale of calmness in the lives of structured data: a keynote talk at the 7th International Conference on Model and Data Engineering (MEDI 2017), October 4-6, 2017 - Barcelona.

Focus: Synthesizes evidence that evolving relational schemata tend to gravitate toward rigidity: growth slows, maintenance becomes concentrated, and long periods of stability dominate later life.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-66854-3_2.
Related material: MEDI 2017 keynote slides on schema evolution and gravitation to rigidity.

Panos Vassiliadis, Apostolos V. Zarras. Schema Evolution Survival Guide for Tables: Avoid Rigid Childhood and You’re En Route to a Quiet Life. Journal on Data Semantics, Volume 6, Issue 4, December 2017, pp 221–241, ISSN: 1861-2040, DOI: 10.1007/s13740-017-0083-x.

Focus: Details the electrolysis pattern of CAiSE 17, establishing the systematic differences of survivor and ultimately deleted tables wrt their birth characteristics, lifetime, and subsequent schema-update behavior.
DOI: 10.1007/s13740-017-0083-x.
Related material: local page for Schema Evolution Survival Guide for Tables with highlights, papers, presentations, data, code, and results.

Panos Vassiliadis, Apostolos Zarras. Survival in schema evolution: putting the lives of survivor and dead tables in counterpoint. 29th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2017), 12-16 June 2017, Essen, Germany.

Focus: Compares survivor and eventually deleted tables and demonstrates the electrolysis pattern: deleted tables typically die shortly after birth, with no updates, whereas survivors mostly live quiet lives with few updates -- except for a small group of tables with high update ratios that are characterized by high durations and survival.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-59536-8_21.
Related material: local page for Survival in Schema Evolution with highlights, paper, presentation, data, code, and results.

Highlights of CAiSE 2017: Electrolysis

Panos Vassiliadis , Apostolos V. Zarras , Ioannis Skoulis. Gravitating to Rigidity: Patterns of Schema Evolution -and its Absence- in the Lives of Tables. Information Systems, Volume 63, January 2017, Pages 24-46, ISSN 0306-4379, doi:10.1016/j.is.2016.06.010.

Focus: Identifies recurring patterns in individual table histories and shows a broad gravitation toward rigidity, with many tables experiencing little or no change after their early life.
DOI: 10.1016/j.is.2016.06.010.
Related material: local page for the table-evolution study with highlights, papers, presentations, data, code, and results.

Panos Vassiliadis, Apostolos Zarras, Ioannis Skoulis. How is Life for a Table in an Evolving Relational Schema? Birth, Death & Everything in Between. 34th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2015). 19-22 October 2015, Stockholm, Sweden.

Focus: Studies tables as evolving entities, relating birth, death, lifetime, size, and update activity to reveal characteristic behaviors across a table's life.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-25264-3_34.
Related material: local page for How is Life for a Table in an Evolving Relational Schema? with highlights, paper, presentation, data, code, and results.

Highlights of Information Systems 2017

Ioannis Skoulis, Panos Vassiliadis, Apostolos V. Zarras. Growing up with stability: How open-source relational databases evolve. Information Systems, Volume 53, October - November 2015, Pages 363 - 385. doi:10.1016/j.is.2015.03.009.

Focus: Applies Lehman's laws to relational schema histories and finds slow growth, long calm periods punctuated by maintenance bursts, and stabilization through perfective maintenance rather than uncontrolled complexity growth.
DOI: 10.1016/j.is.2015.03.009.
Related material: local page for Growing up with stability with highlights, papers, presentations, data, code, and results.

Ioannis Skoulis, Panos Vassiliadis, Apostolos Zarras. Open-Source Databases: Within, Outside, or Beyond Lehman's Laws of Software Evolution?. 26th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2014). 16-20 June 2014, Thessaloniki, Hellas.

Focus: Provides the initial macroscopic assessment of relational schema evolution through Lehman's laws, showing that database schemata evolve differently from typical software while still exhibiting stabilizing evolutionary mechanisms.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-07881-6_26.
Related material: local page for Open-Source Databases: Within, Outside, or Beyond Lehman's Laws of Software Evolution? with highlights, paper, presentation, data, code, and results.

Surveys, Keynotes, and Summaries on Schema Evolution

Panos Vassiliadis. Schema Evolution and Gravitation to Rigidity: a tale of calmness in the lives of structured data. 7th International Conference on Model and Data Engineering (MEDI 2017), October 4-6, 2017 - Barcelona.

[A paper from a keynote talk at MEDI 2017. Plz., visit the Talks page for the talk slides and any other info].

Petros Manousis, Panos Vassiliadis, Apostolos V. Zarras, George Papastefanatos. Schema Evolution for Databases and Data Warehouses. In: Zimányi E., Abelló A. (eds) Business Intelligence. eBISS 2015. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 253., pp. 1-31, Springer.

[A talk at the eBISS school in 2015, accompanied by a Chapter in Lecture Notes in BIP. The chapter (local copy here) surveys related work and the related research results in the area of schema evolution. Plz., visit the Talks page for the talk slides and any other info].

Schema evolution for relational databases: a keynote talk at the 5th International Conference on Data Management Technologies and Applications (DATA 2016), July 24 - July 26, Lisbon, Portugal [click here to watch the video of the talk at vimeo]