Detecting Termination of Active Database Rules Using Symbolic Model Checking

One potential problem of active database applications is the non-termination of rules. Although algorithms have been proposed to detect non-termination, almost all provide a conservative estimate; that is, the algorithms detect all the potential cases of non-termination. These algorithms then leave it to the database programmer to analyze each case to determine if indeed the rules are non-terminating. Our work proposes the use of automated tools for software specification and verification, to analyze active database applications. In this paper we show how the database programmer can automatically detect non-termination using an existing symbolic model checker. Our approach does not require much expertise on the part of the database programmer, and can be used to detect termination cases which the conservative approaches reject as non-terminating ones. Our approach, thus, complements the conservative approaches.