The Relative Complexity of Updates for a Class of Database Views

It is well known that the complexity of testing the correctness of an arbitrary update to a database view can be far greater than the complexity of testing a corresponding update to the main schema. However, views are generally managed according to some protocol which limits the admissible updates to a subset of all possible changes. The question thus arises as to whether there is a more tractable relationship between these two complexities in the presence of such a protocol. In this paper, this question is answered in the affirmative for closed update strategies, which are based upon the constant-complement approach of Bancilhon and Spyratos. Working within a very general framework which is independent of any particular data model, but which recaptures relational schemata constrained by so-called equality-generating dependencies (EGDs), (which include functional dependencies (FDs)), it is shown that the complexity of testing the correctness of a view update which follows a closed update strategy is no greater than that of testing a corresponding update to the main schema. In particular, if the main schema is relational and constrained by FDs, then there exists a set of FDs on the view, against which any candidate update may be tested for correctness. This holds even though the entire view may not be finitely axiomatizable, much less constrained by FDs alone.