TINTIN: a Tool for INcremental INTegrity checking of Assertions in SQL Server

Abstract

We present TINTIN, a tool to perform efficient integrity checking of SQL assertions in SQL Server. TINTIN rewrites each assertion into a set of standard SQL queries that, given a set of insertions and deletions of tuples, allow to incrementally compute whether this update violates the assertion or not. If one of such queries returns a non empty answer, then the assertion is violated. Efficiency is achieved by evaluating only those data and those assertions that can actually be violated according to the update. TINTIN is aimed at two different purposes. First, to show the feasibility of our approach by implementing it on a commercial relational DBMS. Second, to illustrate that the efficiency we achieve is good enough for making assertions to be used in practice.