Analyzing temporal integrity constraints to obtain the minimum number of transition rules

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to obtain advantages for integrity constraint checking in bitemporal deductive databases, analyzing the temporal integrity constraint behaviour. First at all, a new taxonomy of temporal integrity constraints is introduced to achieve a better understanding of why constraints are required and a best way to define them using first order logic. In order to meet these goals, we have studied temporal integrity constraint taxonomies existing on the temporal database area and other deeply related areas such as multiversion databases. These works have been adapted and further developed to cover the scope of bitemporal deductive databases. Before checking, we study the transaction behaviour, introducing the concept of coherent transaction. This allows us to reject transactions that are not coherent, without more information requirements. For integrity constraint checking in bitemporal deductive databases, we derive a set of transition rules for each temporal integrity constraint. Then, Standard Linear Deduction with Negation as Failure Resolution is used to verify that a transaction does not violate any constraint before the transaction is allowed to commit. The set of transition rules obtained is very large; therefore, a carefully analysis of the integrity constraints using the taxonomy introduced above drastically reduces the number of rules. Finally, the paper concludes with an example of the application of this new reduced set of transition rules for integrity constraint checking in bitemporal deductive databases.