Extend database schema by materialized views
The current database schema in ERNIE consists of tables and views. In order to support ad-hoc queries for dynamic graphs, we need to have materialized views plus a good concept to keep them updated. Update strategies range from (1) periodically re-generating the whole materialized views, (2) collecting changes on base tables and updating only those parts of materialized views that might have changed, and (3) triggering materialized view changes from table changes. While (1) is easiest to implement, it's infeasible for the amount of data in the database. (2) and (3) are harder to implement, but better fit the use case of having data covering multiple years in the database and adding data covering an hour or two. (2) is probably more efficient than (3), but even harder to implement. Kevin is working on this and might have results in July 2010.