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Database Repair

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Definition

Given an inconsistent database instance, i.e., that fails to satisfy a given set of integrity constraints, a repair is a new instance over the same schema that is consistent and is obtained after performing minimal changes on the original instance with the purpose of restoring consistency.

Key Points

Database instances may be inconsistent, in the sense that they may not satisfy certain desirable integrity constraints. In order to make the database consistent, certain updates can be performed on the database instance. However, it is natural to expect that any new consistent instance obtained in this way does not differ too much from the original instance. The notion of repair of the original instance captures this intuition: it is an instance of the same schema that does satisfy the integrity constraints and differs from the original instance by a minimal set of changes. Depending on what is meant by minimal set of changes, different repair semantics can be obtained.

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Recommended Reading

  1. Arenas M., Bertossi L., and Chomicki J. Consistent query answers in inconsistent databases. In Proc. 18th ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART Symp. on Principles of Database Systems, 1999, pp. 68–79.

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  2. Bertossi L. Consistent query answering in databases. ACM SIGMOD Rec., 35(2):68–76, 2006.

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  3. Chomicki J. Consistent query answering: five easy pieces. In Proc. 11th Int. Conf. on Database Theory, 2007, pp. 1–17.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

    Authors
    1. Leopoldo Bertossi
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    Editor information

    Editors and Affiliations

    1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

      LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

    2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

      M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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    © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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    Bertossi, L. (2009). Database Repair. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1266

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