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A Mediator for Approximate Consistency: Supporting “Good Enough” Materialized Views

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Abstract

This paper addresses the needs of application designers whowould like to tell an automated assistant the following: “Here is aquery that defines a view I want to materialize within myapplication. I need this view to remain approximately consistent with the state of the data sources from which the view isderived, in accordance with declaratively specified stalenesspredicates. When the view becomes stale, follow the refresh strategyI specify (e.g., eager, lazy, hybrid). You must do this inheterogeneous environments containing both active and passive datasources”.

This paper describes an architecture that realizes this vision. Theapproach supports materialized, object-based views, called quasi-views,defined over shared databases. Quasi-views arerefreshed according to the consistency conditions and refreshstrategies specified declaratively by application designers. Theseconditions allow for the deviation of quasi-views from their databasecounterparts according to well-defined and monitored approximateconsistency predicates. A layer of software called a Mediator for Approximate Consistencyautomatically generates the databaseobjects necessary to enforce these consistency conditions, shieldingthe application developer from the implementation details ofconsistency maintenance. In addition, it does this for both activeand passive (e.g., legacy) data sources.

This paper formalizes quasi-views, presents a declarative quasi-viewspecification language, and describes an architecture andimplementation of a Mediator for Approximate Consistency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA, 22102

    Len Seligman

  2. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, 22030

    Larry Kerschberg

Authors
  1. Len Seligman
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  2. Larry Kerschberg
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Seligman, L., Kerschberg, L. A Mediator for Approximate Consistency: Supporting “Good Enough” Materialized Views. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems 8, 203–225 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008646507484

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008646507484

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