Skip to main content
Log in

Support environment for active rule design

  • Published:
Journal of Intelligent Information Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The lack of tools for rule generation, analysis, and run-time monitoring appears one of the main obstacles to the widespreading of active database applications. This paper describes a complete tool environment for assisting the design of active rules applications; the tools were developed at Politecnico di Milano in the context of the IDEA Project, a 4-years Esprit project sponsored by the European Commission which was launched in June 1992. We describe tools for active rule generation, analysis, debugging, and browsing; rules are defined in Chimera, a conceptual design model and language for the specification of active rules applications. We also introduce a tool for mapping from Chimera into Oracle, a relational product supporting triggers.

Most of the tools described in this paper are fully implemented and currently in operation (beta-testing) within the companies participating to the IDEA Project, with the exception of two of them (called Argonaut-V and Pandora), which will be completed by the end of 1996.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • R. Agrawal, R. J. Cochrane, and B. Lindsay. On maintaining priorities in a production rule system. In G. M. Lohman, A. Sernadas, and R. Camps, editors, Proc. Seventeenth Int'l Conf. on Very Large Data Bases, pages 479–487, Barcelona, Spain, Sept. 1991.

  • A. Aiken, J. Widom, and J. M. Hellerstein. Behavior of database production rules: Termination, confluence, and observable determinism. In M. Stonebraker, editor, Proc. ACM SIGMOD Int'l Conf. on Management of Data, pages 59–68, San Diego, California, May 1992.

  • A.Albano, V.DeAntonellis, and A.DiLeva, editor, Computer-Aided Database Design: The Dataid Project. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  • E. Baralis, S. Ceri, and S. Paraboschi. ARACHNE: A tool for the analysis of active rules. In Proc. of the Second Int. Conf. on Applications of Databases-ADB'95, Santa Clara, California, Dec. 1995. To appear.

  • E. Baralis and J. Widom. An algebraic approach to rule analysis in expert database systems. In Proc. Twentieth Int'l Conf. on Very Large Data Bases pages 475–486, Santiago Chile, Sept. 1994.

  • C. Batini, S. Ceri, and S. B. Navathe. Conceptual Database Design, an Entity-Relationship Approach Benjamin Cummings, 1993.

  • E. Benazet, H. Guehl, and M. Bouzeghoub. VITAL: a visual tool for analysis of rules behavior in active databases. In T. Sellis, editor, Proc. of the Second Workshop on Rules in Databases Systems, LNCS 985, pages 182–196, Athens, Greece, Sept. 1995.

  • S.Ceri, S.Crespi Reghizzi, G.Lamperti, L.Lavazza, and R.Zicari. Algres: an advanced database for complex applications. IEEE Software, 7(4):68–78, July 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  • S. Ceri and P. Fraternali. The IDEA methodology. Technical Report IDEA.WP2.22P.001.03,ESPRIT Project n. 6333 IDEA, June 1995. To be published by Addison-Wesley Publisher Ltd. in the “Series on Database Systems and Applications”.

  • S.Ceri, P.Fraternali, S.Paraboschi, and L.Tanca. Automatic generation of production rules for integrity maintenance. ACM Transactions on Database Systems, 19(3):367–422, Sept. 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  • S. Ceri and R. Manthey. Consolidated specification of Chimera, the conceptual interface of Idea. Technical Report IDEA.DD.2P.004,ESPRIT Project n. 6333 Idea, June 1993.

  • S. Ceri and J. Widom. Deriving production rules for constraint maintenance. In D. McLeod, R. Sacks-Davis, and H. Schek, editors, Proc. Sixteenth Int'l Conf. on Very Large Data Bases pages 566–577, Brisbane, Australia, Aug. 1990.

  • S. Ceri and J. Widom. Deriving Production rules for incremental view maintenance. In G. M. Lohman, A. Sernadas, and R. Camps, editors, Proc. Seventeenth Int'l Conf. on Very Large Data Bases, pages 577–589, Barcelona, Spain, Sept. 1991.

  • S. Chakravarthy, Z. Tamizuddin, and J. Zhou. A visualization and explanation tool for debugging ECA rules in active databases. In T. Sellis, editor, Proc. of the Second Workshop on Rules in Databases Systems, LNCS 985, pages 197–209, Athens, Greece, Sept. 1995.

  • C. Collet, T. Coupaye, and T. Svensen. NAOS: Efficient and modular reactive capabilities in an object-oriented database system. In J. B. Bocca, M. Jarke, and C. Zaniolo, editors, Proc Twentieth Int'l Conf. on Very Large Data Bases, pages 132–143, Santiago, Chile, 1994.

  • O.Diaz, A.Jaime, and N.Paton. DEAR: A DEbugger for Active Rules in an object-oriented context. In N. W.Paton and M. H.Williams, editors, Proc. of First Workshop on Rules in Database Systems, WICS, pages 180–193, Edinburgh, Scotland, Aug. 1993. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

    Google Scholar 

  • N. Gehani and H. V. Jagadish. ODE as an active database: Constraints and triggers. In G. M. Lohman, A Sernadas, and R. Camps, editors, Proc. Seventeenth Int'l Conf. on Very Large Data Bases, pages 327–336, Barcelona, Spain. Sept. 1991.

  • IBM. IBM DATABASE 2 SQL Guide for Common Servers, Version 2, 1995 Version 2.

  • Illustra User's Guide, Server Release 2.1, June 1994.

  • M. Jeusfeld, M. Mertikas, I. Wetzel, M. Jarke, and J. W. Schmidt. Database application development as an object modelling activity. In Proc. 16th VLDB Conference, pages 442–454, Brisbane, Australia, Aug. 1990.

  • A. P. Karadimce and S. D. Urban. Conditional term rewriting as a formal basis for analysis of active database rules. In Proc. Fourth International Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering RIDE-ADS '94, pages 156–162, Houston, Texas, Feb. 1994.

  • J.Mylopoulos P. A.Bernstein and H.Wong. A facility for designing database-intensive applications. ACM Transactions on Database Systems 5(2):185–207, June 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oracle 7 Server Concepts Manual, Dec. 1992. Number 6693-70.

  • S. Paraboschi. Generazione di Regole per la Gestione di Vincoli e Viste in Basi di Dati Attive. PhD thesis, Politecnico di Milano-Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Jan. 1994. In Italian.

  • J.Rumbaugh, M.Blaha, W.Premerlani, F.Eddy, and W.Lorensen. Object-Oriented Modeling and Design. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  • The Validity Team, Bull NH Information Systems. Del Language Reference Manual, v1.2, Apr. 1995.

  • H. Tsai and A. M. K. Cheng. Termination analysis of OPS5 expert systems. In Proc. of the AAAI National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Seattle, Washington, 1994.

  • L. van der Voort and A. Siebes. Termination and confluence of rule execution. In Proc. of the Second International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Washington DC, Nov. 1993.

  • J.Widom and S.Ceri. Active Database Systems Morgan-Kaufmann, San Mateo, California, Aug. 1996.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Additional information

Research presented in this paper is supported by Esprit project P6333 IDEA, and by ENEL contract “VDS 1/94: Integrity Constraint Management”

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Baralis, E., Ceri, S., Fraternali, P. et al. Support environment for active rule design. J Intell Inf Syst 7, 129–149 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00127779

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00127779

Keywords

Navigation