Funded by the National Science Foundation
Principal Investigator: Susan D. Urban
Award No.: IRI-9109195
Duration: September 1, 1991 - February 28, 1993

This research has addressed the problem of termination and confluence in active database rules. The research has been conducted in the context of a declarative, object-oriented model, known as CDOL (Comprehensive, Declarative Object Language), which was developed as part of this work. A unique aspect of CDOL is that it extends existing declarative, object models with support for constraints, integrity maintenance rules, and a declarative update sublanguage. Integrity maintenance rules in CDOL serve as active, user-transparent agents that supplement declarative updates for the purpose of preserving database consistency. The primary contribution of this work has been the establishment of a mapping between the active database concepts of CDOL and conditional term rewriting systems (CTRSs). As a result, this research has demonstrated how termination and confluence results from CTRSs can be applied to active database environments. In particular, this work has 1) applied results from reducing CTRSs to address termination of active database rules and 2) applied results from terminating CTRSs with convergent, contextual critical pairs to address the confluence of active database rules. This research has therefore established a sound theoretical basis for analyzing active rules, thereby supporting future work on the development of practical tools that apply methodology and criteria for developing well-behaved integrity rules.

[Kara91] Karadimce, A. and Urban S. D., "Diagnosing Anomalous Rule Behavior in Deductive Databases with Integrity Maintenance Production Rules," Proc. of the 3rd Int. Workshop on Foundation of Models and Languages for Data and Objects, Aigen, Austria, Sept. 1991, pp. 77-102.
[Diet92] Dietrich, S., Urban, S. D., Harrison, J., and Karadimce, A., "A DOOD Ranch at ASU: Integrating Active, Deductive, and Object-Oriented Databases," IEEE Computer Society Data Eng. Bulletin, vol. 15, no. 1-4, Dec. 1992, pp. 40-43.
[Kara93a] Karadimce, A. and Urban, S. D., "CDOL: A Declarative Platform for Developing OODB Applications," Proc. of the 12th Int. Phoenix Conf. on Computers and Communications, Tempe, March 1993, pp. 224-230.
[Kara93b] Karadimce, A. and Urban S. D., "A Framework for Declarative Update and Constraint Maintenance in Object-Oriented Databases," Proc. of the 9th Int. Conf. on Data Eng., Vienna, Austria, April 1993, pp. 391-398.
[Kara94a] Karadimce, A. and Urban, S. D., "Conditional Term Rewriting Systems as a Formal Basis for Analysis of Active Rules," IEEE Computer Society Int. Worshop on Research Issues in Data Eng.: Active Database Systems, Houston, Feb., 1994.
[Kara96] Karadimce, A. and Urban. S. D., "Refined Triggering Graphs: A Logic-Based Approach to Termination Analysis in an Active Object-Oriented Database," Proceedings of the 1996 International Conference on Data Engineering, New Orleans, February 1996, pp. 384-391.
[Urba93a] Urban, S. D. and Dietrich, S., "A Deductive, Object-Oriented Model as a Formal Framework for Active Database Environments," Proc. of the Workshop on Combining Declarative and Object-Oriented Databases, Washington, D.C., May 1993.

[Kara96] Karadimce, A., Urban, S. D., "Proving Termination of Active Rules in Object-Oriented Databases," submitted to IEEE Transaction on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 1996.
[Urba96] Urban, S. D., Karadimce, A., Dietrich, S. W., Abdellatif, T., Chan, H., "CDOL: A Comprehensive Declarative Object Language," submitted to Data and Knowledge Eng. Journal, revised version submitted March 1996.

[Kara96] Karadimce, A. Termination and Confluence Analysis in Active, Object-Oriented Database Systems, Ph.D. Dissertation, Dept. of Computer Science and Eng., Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ, to be completed Spring 1996.

Return to A DOOD RANCH Home Page