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A Simplification Procedure for Integrity Constraints

Description

This program has been designed to simplify database integrity checking.

Its input:

the database integrity constraints
the intensional rules (i.e., view definitions) of the database
the update (transaction) that is going to be executed on the database

Its output:

a test (set of queries)

This test, to be checked against the database before the execution of the update, is a necessary and sufficient condition for consistency of the updated state. Furthermore, the test incorporates the notion of incremental evaluation of integrity constraints and is therefore generally simpler to check than the original integrity constraints.

Rather than a specific update, we can specify an update pattern, i.e., an update containing parameters instead of specific values.

This procedure is based on a set of transformation operators that are here implemented in a Prolog program and have been tested under SICStus Prolog 3.11.

See the manual and the references for more specific information.

Last modification October 2004 - Davide Martinenghi