Title: The Active Use of Constraints in the Design of Object-Oriented Database Applications

Funded by the National Science Foundation
Principal Investigator: Susan D. Urban
Award No.: IRI-8810640 (at University of Miami, July 1988 - August 1989)
IRI-8996260 (at Arizona State University, August 1989 - December 1990)
Duration: July 1988 - December 1990

RESEARCH OVERVIEW

The primary objective of this research was to extend and apply the principal investigator's dissertation research on constraint analysis. Constraint analysis was developed as an approach to the active use of the semantics associated with an object-oriented database schema. The major results of this extended investigation of constraint analysis can be summarized as: 1) the refinement of an explicit constraint language, known as ALICE, for stating constraints in an object-oriented environment, 2) the development of a constraint explanation tool, known as CONTEXT, to demonstrate the practical application of the constraint analysis process, 3) the development of algorithms for transforming the output of CONTEXT into active database rules for the maintenance of database integrity through propagation actions, and 4) the development of a prototype for demonstrating how integrity maintenance rules generated by CONTEXT can be used to support declarative constraints in an object-oriented environment. Another significant aspect of the research is the foundation it has provided for further investigation of integrity constraints in object-oriented databases, cyclic and anomalous rule behavior in integrity maintenance rules, execution models for rules in active databases, and the run-time monitoring of active database rules.

Published Papers Recognizing NSF Support:

[Urba89] Urban, S. D., "ALICE: An Assertion Langauge for Integrity Constraint Expression," Proc. of the 13th Int. Computer Software and Applications Conf., Orlando, Sept. 1989, pp. 292-299.
[Urba90] Urban, S. D. and Desiderio, M., "Translating Constraints to Rules in CONTEXT: A Constraint Explanation Tool," in Proc. of the 4th TC2 Working Conf. on Database Semantics. Object-Oriented Database: Analysis, Design, and Construction, Windemere, U. K., July 1990, published by North-Holland, Meersman, R. and Kent, W. (editors), 1991, pp. 373-392.
[Urba92a] Urban, S. D. and Desiderio, M., "CONTEXT: A Constraint Explanation Tool," Data and Knowledge Eng. Journal, Peter Chen (editor), vol. 8, 1992, pp. 153-183.
[Urba92b] Urban, S. D. and Nannapaneni, R., "The Implementation and Evaluation of Integrity Maintenance Rules in an Object-Oriented Database," Proc. of the 8th Int. Conf. on Data Eng., Feb. 1992, Phoenix, AZ, pp. 565-572.
[Urba92c] Urban, S. D. and Desiderio, M., "Explanation Trees in CONTEXT: A Constraint Explanation Tool," Proc. of the 11th Int. Phoenix Conf. on Computers and Communications, March 1992, Phoenix, AZ, pp. 364-371.
[Urba93] Urban, S. D. and Lim, B. L., "An Intelligent Framework for Active Support of Database Semantics," International Journal of Expert Systems: Research and Applications, Special Issue on AI and Databases, F. Petry (Guest Editor), vol. 6, no. 1, 1993, pp. 1-38. Also in Advances in Databases and Artificial Intelligence, JAI Press, F. Petry and L. Delcambre (Editors), vol. 1, 1995, pp. 167-208.

Theses Produced:

[Desi90] Desiderio, M., A Constraint Explanation Tool for Object-Oriented Data Modeling, M.S. Thesis, Electrical and Computer Eng. Dept., Univ. of Miami, Spring 1990.
[Nann91] Nannapaneni, R., An Implementation of Integrity Maintenance Rules in an Object-Oriented Database, M.S. Thesis, Dept. of Computer Science and Eng., Arizona State Univ., Summer 1992.

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