Database researchers have recognized that integrating a production rules facility into a database system provides a uniform mechanism for a number of advanced database features including integrity constraint enforcement, derived data maintenance, triggers, protection, version control, and others. In addition, a database system with rule processing capabilities provides a useful platform for lar...

The large quantity and often questionable quality of available information in the information age provides a shaky foundation for decision making by individuals and organizations alike. This has created a tremendous demand for information services which can access, filter, process and present information on an as-needed basis. However, two factors complicate the design of such information servi...

Modern information systems require advanced transaction models providing means to describe complex activities such as transactional workkows. Complex activities consist of sets of transactions which are interrelated , i.e., there are dependencies among several transactions. We analyze diierent kinds of dependencies and present an extended formal framework (based on ACTA) for describing advanced...

This paper critically analyse the use of active databases as an enabling technology for result sharing as defined in the DAI literature. In particular, we demostrate how ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rules can be used for supporting result shared cooperation. Further, we demonstrate how composite events as defined within active databases can help a problem solving agent to precisely specify when...

This paper describes our development of the Starburst Rule System, an active database rules facility integrated into the Starburst extensible relational database system at the IBM Almaden Research Center. The Starburst rule language is based on arbitrary database state transitions rather than tupleor statement-level changes, yielding a clear and exible execution semantics. The rule system has b...