IMPROVEMENTS IN DATABASE CONCURRENCY CONTROL WITH LOCKING

Various techniques have been proposed to ensure the safe, concurrent execution of a set of database transactions. Locking protocols are the most prominent and widely used of these techniques, with two-phase locking and tree-locking being but two examples of these protocols. A locking protocol defines a general set of restrictions on the placement of lock and unlock steps within transactions. In this paper we show that it is possible to further increase the potential level of concurrency of a set of transactions, within the context of a specific locking protocol, by further restricting the placement of lock and unlock steps within each transaction. We also discuss a variation of the tree-locking protocol that allows transaction to be locked with respect to a dynamically changing set of tree structures. In addition we define and discuss the concept of a concurrency cost function for a locked transaction. This cost function measures the potential for conflict of a transaction with other transactions.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

OBJECTS IN TIME

Two recent lines of database research, proceeding independently, have been concerned with providing a richer, more intuitive view of information at the user level. Historical database research has focused on ways to provide users with a view of information anchored and evolving in the temporal dimension. Object-oriented database research focuses on encapsulating both the structure and the behavior of the objects that users intend to model. In this paper we explore how these two lines of research might be brought together, providing to the user the representation and management of objects in time.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

ON COMPLETENESS OF HISTORICAL RELATIONAL DATA MODELS

Several proposals for extending the relational data model to incorporate the temporal dimension of data have appeared in the past several years. These proposals have differed considerably in the way that the temporal dimension has been incorporated both into the structure of the extended relations that are defined as part of these extended model, and into the operations of the extended relational algebra or calculus component of the models. Because of these differences it has been difficult to compare the proposed models and to make judgements as to which of them is "better" or indeed, the "best." In this paper we propose a notion of historical relational completeness, analogous to Codd's notion of relational completeness, and examine several historical relational proposals in light of this standard.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

A PROBLEM-SOLVER/TMS ARCHITECTURE FOR GENERAL CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION PROBLEMS

Constraints, in various forms, are ubiquitous to design problems. In this paper, we provide a formal characterization of a generalized constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) that can be used to model many types of design/planning problems, and the architecture of an imlemented reasoning system for solving this problem. The architecture includes a truth maintenance system (TMS) which is specifically designed to reason about the relationships expressed in the constraints as a problem solution evolves. The CSP consists of two types of data. The first type of datum corresponds to assignments that are handled by the problem solver, and the second type corresponds to constraint terms handled by the TMS. The dependency network, representing the relationships among constraint terms, is static and generally quite small, depending on the number of constraint terms. Also, justifications are never manipulated (only evaluated). This results in an architecture that makes efficient use of both space and time. The need for efficient TMSs, even though these might deal only with certain classes of problems, is underscored by the fact that general purpose TMSs have often been found to be highly inefficient for solving large problems. We also show how certain instances of the generalized CSP can be formulated as an integer programming problem, special cases of which can be solved efficiently using mathematical (integer) programming techniques.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

THE HISTORICAL RELATIONAL DATA MODEL (HRDM) AND ALGEBRA BASED ON LIFESPANS

Critical to the design of an historical database model is the representation of the âexistenceâ of objects across the temporal dimension -- for example, the "birth," "death," or "rebirth" of an individual, or the establishment or dis-establishment of a relationship. The notion of the "lifespan" of a database object is proposed as a simple framework for expressing these concepts. An object's lifespan is simply those periods of time during which the database models the properties of that object. In this paper we propose the historical relational data model (HRDM) and algebra that is based upon lifespans and that views the values of all attributes as functions from time points to simple domains. The model that we obtain is a consistent extension of the relational data model, and provides a simple mechanism for providing both time-varying data and time-varying schemes.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

ON CONSISTENT EXTENSIONS TO THE RELATIONAL DATABASE MODEL

Information Systems Working Papers Serie

A KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION FOR CONSTRAINT SATISFACTION PROBLEMS

In this paper we present a general representation for constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) and a - framework for reasoning about their solution that unlike most constraint-based relaxation algorithms. stresses the need for a "natural" encoding of constraint knowledge and can facilitate making inferences for propagation, backtracking, and explanation. The representation consists of two components: a generate-and-test problem solver which contains information about the problem variables, and a constraint-driven reasoner that manages a set of constraints, specified as arbitrarily complex Boolean expressions and represented in the form of a constraint network. This constraint network: incorporates control information (reflected in the syntax of the constraints) that is used for constraint propagation: contains dependency information that can be used for explanation and for dependency-directed backtracking; and is incremental in the sense that if the problem specification is modified, a new solution can be derived by modifying the existing solution.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

On Completeness of Historical Relational Query Languages

Numerous proposals for extending the relational data model to incorporate the temporal dimension of data have appeared in the past several years. These proposals have differed considerably in the way that the temporal dimension has been incorporated both into the structure of the extended relations of these temporal models, and consequently into the extended relational algebra or calculus that they define. Because of these differences it has been difficult to compare the proposed models and to make judgments as to which of them might in some sense be equivalent or even better. In this paper we define the notions of temporally grouped and temporally ungrouped historical data models and propose two notions of historical reIationa1 completeness, analogous to Codd's notion of relational completeness, one for each type of model. We show that the temporally ungrouped models are less expressive than the grouped models, but demonstrate a technique for extending the ungrouped models with a grouping mechanism to capture the additional semantic power of temporal grouping. For the ungrouped models we define three different languages, a temporal logic, a logic with explicit reference to time, and a temporal algebra, and show that under certain assumptions all three are equivalent in power. For the grouped models we define a many-sorted logic with variables over ordinary values, historical values, and times. Finally, we demonstrate the equivalence of this grouped calculus and the ungrouped calculus extended with a grouping mechanism. We believe the classification of historical data models into grouped and ungrouped provides a useful framework for the comparison of models in the literature, and furthermore the exposition of equivalent languages for each type provides reasonable standards for common, and minimal, notions of historical relational completeness.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

ON COMPLETENESS OF HISTORICAL RELATIONAL QUERY LANGUAGES

Numerous proposals for extending the relational data model to incorporate the temporal dimension of data have appeared in the past several years. These proposals have differed considerably in the way that the temporal dimension has been incorporated both into the structure of the extended relations of these temporal models, and consequently into the extended relational algebra or calculus that they define. Because of these differences it has been difficult to compare the proposed models and to make judgments as to which of them might in some sense be equivalent or even better. In this paper we define the notions of temporally grouped and temporally ungrouped historical data models and propose two notions of historical relational completeness, analogous to Codd's notion of relational completeness, one for each type of model. We show that the temporally ungrouped models are less powerful than the grouped models, but demonstrate a technique for extending the ungrouped models with a grouping mechanism to capture the additional semantic power of temporal grouping. For the ungrouped models we define three different languages, a temporal logic, a logic with explicit reference to time, and a temporal algebra, and show that under certain assumptions all three are equivalent in power. For the grouped models we define a many-sorted logic with variables over ordinary values, historical values, and times. Finally, we demonstrate the equivalence of this grouped calculus and the ungrouped calculus extended with the proposed grouping mechanism. We believe the classification of historical data models into grouped and ungrouped provides a useful framework for the comparison of models in the literature, and furthermore the exposition of equivalent languages for each type provides reasonable standards for common, and minimal, notions of historical relational completeness.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

DEPENDENCY DIRECTED BACKTRACKING IN GENERALIZED SATISFICING ASSIGNMENT PROBLEMS

Many authors have described search techniques for the satisficing assignment problem: the problem of finding an interpretation for a set of discrete variables that satisfies a given set of constraints. In this paper we present a formal specification of dependency directed backtracking as applied to this problem. We also generalize the satisficing assignment problem to include limited resource constraints that arise in operations research and industrial engineering. We discuss several new search heuristics that can be applied to this generalized problem, and give some empirical results on the performance of these heuristics.Information Systems Working Papers Serie