Combining Theory and Practice in Integrity Control: A Declarative Approach to the Specification of a Transaction Modification Subsystem

Abstract

Integrity control is generally considered an important topic in the field of database system research. In the database literature, many proposals for integrity control mechanisms canbe found. A large group of proposals has a formal character, and does not cover complete algorithms that can be used in a real-world database system with multi-update transactions. Another group of proposals is system-oriented and often lacks a complete formalbackground on transactions and integrity control; algorithms are usually described in system terms. This paper combines the essentials of both groups: it presents a declarative specification of a transaction-based integrity control technique that has a solidformal basis and can easily be applied in real-world database systems. The technique, called transaction modification, features simple semantics, full transaction support, and extensibility to parallel data processing. These claims are supported by a prototype implementation of a transaction modification subsystem in the high-performance PRISMA/DB database system. This paper shows that it is well possible for an integrity control technique tocombine a formal approach with complete functionality and high performance