Managing Rule Conflicts in an Active Database.

@inproceedings{DBLP:conf/pods/JagadishMM96,
  author    = {H. V. Jagadish and
               Alberto O. Mendelzon and
               Inderpal Singh Mumick},
  title     = {Managing Rule Conflicts in an Active Database},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Fifteenth ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART Symposium
               on Principles of Database Systems, June 3-5, 1996, Montreal,
               Canada},
  publisher = {ACM Press},
  year      = {1996},
  isbn      = {0-89791-781-2},
  pages     = {192-201},
  ee        = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/237661.237710, db/conf/pods/JagadishMM96.html},
  crossref  = {DBLP:conf/pods/96},
  bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
}

Abstract

Rules as used as a programming paradigm in several application domains, including active databases, planning, expert systems, and billing. For example, active databases have rules that execute upon the occurence of particular events if specified condition predicates are satisfied. It is often the case that multiple rules are fireable when a particular event occurs. We propose a declarative mechanism to control the interaction and execution of multiple rules. The mechanism is based upon logical meta-rules that can express various types of relationships between rules. The meta-rules allow us to reason statically about the rule behavior. We can determine, in polynomical time, if a rule will never execute, whether two rules can ever be executed together, and whether a rule system is guarateed to have a unique execution set for all possible rules that become fireable.

In this paper, we illustrate our techniques using rules in an active database. A system based upon the meta-rules and the static analysis presented here has been found to be of value in a billing application at AT&T to control interactions between discount plans, and is presently being implemented within the application.

Copyright © 1996 by the ACM, Inc., used by permission. Permission to make digital or hard copies is granted provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or direct commercial advantage, and that copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation.

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