Structural Testing of Active DataBases

Active databases (ADBs) are databases that include active components or agents that can execute actions. The rise of active databases in the picture of software development has a great impact on software systems and in the discipline of software engineering. However, we still lack the foundations that are needed to adequately support this new tool. These foundations are needed in order to properly apply known software engineering techniques to ADBs and systems that use them. Among the methods and techniques used to improve quality, we count systematic testing. In this work, we generalize structural testing techniques to ADB systems. We introduce a model of active databases, called dbgraph, suitable for testing. We show that dbgraphs can be used to generalize structural testing techniques for ADBs. Moreover, we introduce several new structural criteria aimed at find errors in a set of rules for an ADB. We also compare the strength of the coverage criteria presented in this work.Supported in part by UBACyT grant EX186.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Analyzing Repetitive Evaluations of Active Rules Within a Transaction

Projet RODINAn active database system automatically triggers rules in response to certain events occuring. Events are issued by transactions or action parts of rules. Repeated executions of rules can be caused by the structure of the initial triggering transaction program and by the structure and execution semantics of rules. Repeated calculations of rules may incur costly redundant computations in rule conditions or actions. The central contribution of this paper is to propose technics for analyzing the behaviour of a transaction and a set of rules triggered by this transaction in order to derive: (i) if a given rule is processed more than once, and (ii) a fine indication of the database changes that may occur between two consecutive executions of the rule. Knowing these changes, it is possible to use existing algorithms that compute useful intermediate expressions in a rule that can be cached and incrementally maintained in order to avoid redundant computations. A notable property of our analysis technics is that they are parametrized by a few essential semantics parameters that define the execution semantics of an active rule language. Thus, our analysis apply to a large class of existing active rule systems

Temporal and Contextual Dependencies in Relational Data Modeling

Although a solid theoretical foundation of relational data modeling has existed for decades, critical reassessment from temporal requirements’ perspective reveals shortcomings in its integrity constraints. We identify the need for this work by discussing how existing relational databases fail to ensure correctness of data when the data to be stored is time sensitive. The analysis presented in this work becomes particularly important in present times where, because of relational databases’ inadequacy to cater to all the requirements, new forms of database systems such as temporal databases, active databases, real time databases, and NoSQL (non-relational) databases have been introduced. In relational databases, temporal requirements have been dealt with either at application level using scripts or through manual assistance, but no attempts have been made to address them at design level. These requirements are the ones that need changing metadata as the time progresses, which remains unsupported by Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) to date. Starting with shortcomings of data, entity, and referential integrity in relational data modeling, we propose a new form of integrity that works at a more detailed level of granularity. We also present several important concepts including temporal dependency, contextual dependency, and cell level integrity. We then introduce cellular-constraints to implement the proposed integrity and dependencies, and also how they can be incorporated into the relational data model to enable RDBMS to handle temporal requirements in future. Overall, we provide a formal description to address the temporal requirements’ problem in relational data model, and design a framework for solving this problem. We have supplemented our proposition using examples, experiments and results

Data base projecting in the field of education computer software

U radu su definisane teorijske postavke povezivanja koncepata otvorenog i zatvorenog sveta u jedinstven sistem za rukovanje bazom podataka u režimu otvorenog, zatvorenog i otvorenog/zatvorenog sveta. Opisan je konkretan programski sistem BASELOG, koji je razvijen na datim teoretskim postavkama. Opisan je postupak projektovanja baza podataka u oblasti obrazovnog softvera, koji je zasnovan na BASELOG-sistemu.In this work theoretical bases of connecting concept open and closed world in one data base management system which works through open, closed and open/closed world are defined. BASELOG-program system is descripted and developed on given theoretical bases. There is also descripted process of data base projecting in the field of education software which is based on BASELOG-system

The Language XChange

The research topic investigated by this thesis is reactivity on the Web. Reactivity on the Web is an emerging research issue covering: updating data on the Web, exchanging information about events (such as executed updates) between Web sites, and reacting to combinations of such events. Following a declarative approach to reactivity on the Web, a novel reactive language called XChange is proposed. Novelties of the language are represented by the proposed data metaphor intended to ease the language understanding and the supported reactive features tailored to the characteristics of the Web. Realising this pressuposed refining, extending, and adapting to a new medium some of the concepts on which active database systems are built upon. Reactivity is specified in XChange by means of reactive rules (or event-condition-action rules) having the following components: the event part is a query against events that occurred on the Web, the condition part is a query against Web resources (expressed in the Web query language Xcerpt), and the action part is a transaction specification (specifying updates to be executed and events to be raised in an all-or-nothing manner). Novel in XChange is its ability to detect composite events on the Web, i.e. possibly time related combinations of events that have occurred at (same or different) Web sites. XChange introduces a novel view over the Web data by stressing a clear separation between persistent data (data of Web resources, such as XML or HTML documents) and volatile data (event data communicated on the Web between XChange programs). Based on the differences between these kinds of data, the data metaphor is that of written text vs. speech. XChange's language design enforces this clear separation and entails new characteristics of event processing on the Web. After motivating the need for a solution to reactivity on the Web, this thesis introduces the design principles and syntax of the language XChange accompanied by use cases for demonstrating the practical applicability of its constructs. Important contributions of the thesis are the specification of the language semantics and the description of an algortihm for evaluating XChange programs