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Active Database Systems

Triggers and Rules for Advanced Database Processing

  • 1st Edition - September 1, 1995
  • Latest edition
  • Editors: Jennifer Widom, Stefano Ceri
  • Language: English

Active database systems enhance traditional database functionality with powerful rule-processing capabilities, providing a uniform and efficient mechanism for many database sy… Read more

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Description

Active database systems enhance traditional database functionality with powerful rule-processing capabilities, providing a uniform and efficient mechanism for many database system applications. Among these applications are integrity constraints, views, authorization, statistics gathering, monitoring and alerting, knowledge-based systems, expert systems, and workflow management. This significant collection focuses on the most prominent research projects in active database systems. The project leaders for each prototype system provide detailed discussions of their projects and the relevance of their results to the future of active database systems.

Key features

* A broad overview of current active database systems and how they can be extended and improved
* A comprehensive introduction to the core topics of the field, including its motivation and history
* Coverage of active database (trigger) capabilities in commercial products
* Discussion of forthcoming standards

Table of contents

Active Database Systems: Triggers and Rules for Advanced Database Processing

Edited by Jennifer Widom and Stefano Ceri



Preface


1 Introduction to Active Database Systems Jennifer Widom and Stefano Ceri


1.1 History


1.2 Active Database Rules


1.2.1 Other Database Rules


1.3 Rule Language Design


1.3.1 Events


1.3.2 Conditions


1.3.3 Actions


1.3.4 Omitting the Event


1.3.5 Transition Values


1.3.6 Physical Versus Logical Events


1.3.7 Other Features


1.4 Rule Execution Semantics


1.4.1 Rule processing Granularity


1.4.2 Instance-Oriented Versus Set-Oriented Execution


1.4.3 Interative Versus Recursive Algorithms


1.4.4 Conflict Resolution


1.4.5 Sequential Versus Concurrent Execution


1.4.6 Coupling Modes


1.4.7 Termination


1.5 System Architecture


1.5.1 Layered Architecture


1.5.2 Built-in Architecture


1.5.3 Compiled Architecture


1.6 Implementation Issues


1.6.1 Rule Management


1.6.2 Concurrency Control


1.6.3 Crash Recovery


1.6.4 Authorization


1.6.5 Error Handling


1.6.6 Rule Tracing


1.6.7 Efficient Condition Evaluation


1.6.8 Rule Compilation


1.6.9 Application Interaction


1.7 Application Development


1.7.1 Design Methodologies


1.7.2 Structuring Mechanisms


1.7.3 Rule Analysis


1.7.4 Rule Derivation


1.7.5 Development Environments


1.8 Research Projects


1.8.1 Relational Active Database Systems


1.8.2 Object-Oriented Active Database Systems


1.8.3 Other Work


1.9 Commercialization



2 The POSTGRES Rule System Spyros Potamianos and Michael Stonebraker


2.1 Syntax and Semantics of Rule Language


2.1.1 Forward and Backward Chaining Rules


2.2 Examples


2.3 Rule System Architecture


2.4 The Tuple Level Rule System Implementation


2.4.1 Rule Locks


2.4.2 Rule Stubs


2.5 The Query Rewrite Rule System Implementation


2.6 Applications


2.6.1 Implementing Views Using POSTGRES Rules


2.6.2 Implementing Versions using POSTGRES Rules


2.7 Future Directions


2.7.1 Improved rule locks and stubs


2.7.2 Deferred rules



3 The Ariel Project Eric N. Hanson


3.1 The Ariel Query and Rule Languages


3.1.1 Query Language


3.1.2 Rule Language


3.1.3 Semantics of Rule Execution


3.2 Examples


3.3 System Architecture


3.4 The Discrimination Network


3.4.1 The Selection Predicate Index


3.4.2 Saving Storage using Virtual (-memories


3.4.3 Testing Transition, Event, and Normal Conditions Together


3.5 The Rule Execution Monitor


3.6 Optimization and Execution of Rule Actions


3.7 Performance Results


3.8 Conclusions



4 The Starburst Rule System Jennifer Widom


4.1 Syntax of Rule Language


4.1.1 Rule Creation


4.1.2 Other Rule Commands


4.1.3 Rule Sets


4.2 Semantics of Rule Execution


4.2.1 Transitions


4.2.2 End-of-Transaction Rule Processing


4.2.3 Rule Processing Commands


4.2.4 Rule Selection


4.3 Examples


4.4 System Architecture


4.5 Implementation Features


4.5.1 Transition Information


4.5.2 Rule Execution


4.5.3 Concurrency Control


4.5.4 Authorization


4.5.5 Error Handling


4.6 Applications


4.6.1 Integrity Constraints


4.6.2 Materialized Views


4.6.3 Deductive Data


4.7 Summary and Future Directions



5 The A-RDL System Eric Simon and Jerry Kiernan


5.1 Syntax of the Rule Language


5.1.1 Different Kinds of Relations


5.1.2 Syntax of a Rule


5.1.3 Syntax of a Rule Module


5.1.4 Well-Formed Rule Modules


5.2 Basics for Semantics


5.2.1 Events


5.2.2 Delta Relations


5.2.3 Construction of Delta Relations


5.2.4 Synchronizing External Events and Rule Execution


5.3 Examples of Rules and Rule Modules


5.3.1 Example of Rules


5.3.2 Examples of Rule Modules


5.4 Semantics of Rule Execution


5.4.1 Preliminaries


5.4.2 Virtual Definition Modules


5.4.3 Base Definition Modules


5.4.4 Controlling the Execution of Rules


5.5 System Architecture and Implementation Features


5.5.1 Process Architecture


5.5.2 Functional Architecture


5.5.3 Generating the Trigger Monitor


5.6 Summary and Future Directions



6 Active Rule Management in Chimera Stefano Ceri, Pietro Fraternali, Stefano Paraboschi, and Letizia Branca


6.1 Syntax of Rule Language


6.1.1 Active Rule Definition


6.1.2 Other Rule Commands


6.2 Semantics of Rule Execution


6.2.1 The Event Base


6.2.2 Translation from chimera Rules into Core Format


6.2.3 Core Rule Execution Algorithm


6.2.4 Rules and Transactions


6.3 Examples


6.4 Architecture and Implementation Features


6.4.1 Compilation Techniques


6.4.2 Run-Time System


6.4.3 Debugger


6.5 Summary and Future Directions



7 The HiPAC Project Umeshwar Dayal, Alejandro P. Buchmann, and Sharma Chakravarthy


7.1 Rule Model and Language


7.1.1 The Rule Type


7.1.2 Operations on Rules


7.1.3 The Event type


7.2 Semantics of Rule Execution


7.2.1 Coupling Modes


7.2.2 An Extended Nested Transacted Model


7.2.3 Controlling Rule Execution Order


7.2.4 Failure Semantics and Recovery


7.3 Examples


7.4 System Architecture and Implementation


7.4.1 Component Functionality


7.4.2 Component Interaction


7.4.3 Detection of Data Manipulation Events


7.4.4 Condition Evaluation


7.4.5 Prototypes


7.5 Applications


7.5.1 Time-constrained data management

7.6 Summary



8 Active Database Facilities in Ode Narain Gehani and H. V. Jagadish


8.1 Constraints


8.1.1 Hard Constraints


8.1.2 Soft Constraints


8.1.3 Special Constructs


8.1.4 Discussion


8.1.5 Inter-Object Constraints


8.1.6 Examples


8.2 Triggers


8.2.1 Event Specification Facilities


8.2.2 More Operators for Specifying Events


8.2.3 Discussion


8.2.4 Examples


8.3 Implementation


8.4 Summary and Future Directions



9 Standards and Commercial System Stefano Ceri and Jennifer Widom


9.1 Integrity Constraints in the SQL-92 Standard


9.1.1 Table Constraints


9.1.2 Referential Integrity Constraints


9.1.3 SQL-92 Assertions


9.2 Assertions and Triggers in SQL3


9.2.1 SQL3 Assertions


9.2.2 Triggers


9.3 Triggers in Commercial Relational Systems


9.3.1 Oracle


9.3.2 Informix


9.3.3 Ingres


9.3.4 Rdb


9.3.5 Sybase


9.3.6 Allbase/SQL


9.3.7 InterBase


9.4 Conclusions



10 Applications of Active Databases Stefano Ceri and Jennifer Widom


10.1 Rules for Integrity Constraint Maintenance


10.1.1 Features of Constraint Maintenance


10.1.2 Active Rules for Constraint Maintenance


10.1.3 Generation of Active Rules


10.1.4 Example


10.2 View Maintenance


10.2.1 Virtual Views


10.2.2 Materialized Views


10.3 Rules for Workflow Management


10.4 Rules for Energy management


10.4.1 Topology Rules


10.4.2 Power Distribution Rules


10.4.3 Discussion


10.5 Approaches to Active Rule Design


10.5.1 Rule Generation


10.5.2 Rule Analysis


10.5.3 Rule Debugging


10.6 Conclusions



11 Conclusions and Future Directions Jennifer Widom and Stefano Ceri


11.1 Trends and Consensus


11.2 Significant Differences


11.3 Standardization


11.4 Future Directions

Bibliography

List of Authors

Index

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: September 1, 1995
  • Language: English

About the editors

JW

Jennifer Widom

Jennifer Widom, Stanford University and Stefano Ceri, Politecnico di Milano

SC

Stefano Ceri

Stefano Ceri is Professor of Database Systems at Politecnico di Milano. His research interests are focused on extending database technology to incorporate data distribution, deductive and active rules, and object orientation.