241,740 research outputs found
Protocols for Integrity Constraint Checking in Federated Databases
A federated database is comprised of multiple interconnected database systems that primarily operate independently but cooperate to a certain extent. Global integrity constraints can be very useful in federated databases, but the lack of global queries, global transaction mechanisms, and global concurrency control renders traditional constraint management techniques inapplicable. This paper presents a threefold contribution to integrity constraint checking in federated databases: (1) The problem of constraint checking in a federated database environment is clearly formulated. (2) A family of protocols for constraint checking is presented. (3) The differences across protocols in the family are analyzed with respect to system requirements, properties guaranteed by the protocols, and processing and communication costs. Thus, our work yields a suite of options from which a protocol can be chosen to suit the system capabilities and integrity requirements of a particular federated database environment
Automated Mapping of UML Activity Diagrams to Formal Specifications for Supporting Containment Checking
Business analysts and domain experts are often sketching the behaviors of a
software system using high-level models that are technology- and
platform-independent. The developers will refine and enrich these high-level
models with technical details. As a consequence, the refined models can deviate
from the original models over time, especially when the two kinds of models
evolve independently. In this context, we focus on behavior models; that is, we
aim to ensure that the refined, low-level behavior models conform to the
corresponding high-level behavior models. Based on existing formal verification
techniques, we propose containment checking as a means to assess whether the
system's behaviors described by the low-level models satisfy what has been
specified in the high-level counterparts. One of the major obstacles is how to
lessen the burden of creating formal specifications of the behavior models as
well as consistency constraints, which is a tedious and error-prone task when
done manually. Our approach presented in this paper aims at alleviating the
aforementioned challenges by considering the behavior models as verification
inputs and devising automated mappings of behavior models onto formal
properties and descriptions that can be directly used by model checkers. We
discuss various challenges in our approach and show the applicability of our
approach in illustrative scenarios.Comment: In Proceedings FESCA 2014, arXiv:1404.043
Epistemic virtues, metavirtues, and computational complexity
I argue that considerations about computational complexity show that all finite agents need characteristics like those that have been called epistemic virtues. The necessity of these virtues follows in part from the nonexistence of shortcuts, or efficient ways of finding shortcuts, to cognitively expensive routines. It follows that agents must possess the capacities – metavirtues –of developing in advance the cognitive virtues they will need when time and memory are at a premium
Integrity Constraint Checking in Federated Databases
A federated database is comprised of multiple interconnected databases that cooperate in an autonomous fashion. Global integrity constraints are very useful in federated databases, but the lack of global queries, global transaction mechanisms, and global concurrency control renders traditional constraint management techniques inapplicable. The paper presents a threefold contribution to integrity constraint checking in federated databases: (1) the problem of constraint checking in a federated database environment is clearly formulated; (2) a family of cooperative protocols for constraint checking is presented; (3) the differences across protocols in the family are analyzed with respect to system requirements, properties guaranteed, and costs involved. Thus, we provide a suite of options with protocols for various environments with specific system capabilities and integrity requirement
Consistency and Completeness of Rewriting in the Calculus of Constructions
Adding rewriting to a proof assistant based on the Curry-Howard isomorphism,
such as Coq, may greatly improve usability of the tool. Unfortunately adding an
arbitrary set of rewrite rules may render the underlying formal system
undecidable and inconsistent. While ways to ensure termination and confluence,
and hence decidability of type-checking, have already been studied to some
extent, logical consistency has got little attention so far. In this paper we
show that consistency is a consequence of canonicity, which in turn follows
from the assumption that all functions defined by rewrite rules are complete.
We provide a sound and terminating, but necessarily incomplete algorithm to
verify this property. The algorithm accepts all definitions that follow
dependent pattern matching schemes presented by Coquand and studied by McBride
in his PhD thesis. It also accepts many definitions by rewriting, containing
rules which depart from standard pattern matching.Comment: 20 page
IUPC: Identification and Unification of Process Constraints
Business Process Compliance (BPC) has gained significant momentum in research
and practice during the last years. Although many approaches address BPC, they
mostly assume the existence of some kind of unified base of process constraints
and focus on their verification over the business processes. However, it
remains unclear how such an inte- grated process constraint base can be built
up, even though this con- stitutes the essential prerequisite for all further
compliance checks. In addition, the heterogeneity of process constraints has
been neglected so far. Without identification and separation of process
constraints from domain rules as well as unification of process constraints,
the success- ful IT support of BPC will not be possible. In this technical
report we introduce a unified representation framework that enables the
identifica- tion of process constraints from domain rules and their later
unification within a process constraint base. Separating process constraints
from domain rules can lead to significant reduction of compliance checking
effort. Unification enables consistency checks and optimizations as well as
maintenance and evolution of the constraint base on the other side.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, technical repor
Metamodel-based model conformance and multiview consistency checking
Model-driven development, using languages such as UML and BON, often makes use of multiple diagrams (e.g., class and sequence diagrams) when modeling systems. These diagrams, presenting different views of a system of interest, may be inconsistent. A metamodel provides a unifying framework in which to ensure and check consistency, while at the same time providing the means to distinguish between valid and invalid models, that is, conformance. Two formal specifications of the metamodel for an object-oriented modeling language are presented, and it is shown how to use these specifications for model conformance and multiview consistency checking. Comparisons are made in terms of completeness and the level of automation each provide for checking multiview consistency and model conformance. The lessons learned from applying formal techniques to the problems of metamodeling, model conformance, and multiview consistency checking are summarized
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