Skip Navigation

The Computer Journal 1983 26(2):124-133; doi:10.1093/comjnl/26.2.124
© 1983 by British Computer Society
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (6)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Frost, R. A.
Right arrow Articles by Whittaker, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

A Step Towards the Automatic Maintenance of the Semantic Integrity of Databases

R. A. Frost * and S. Whittaker *

Department of Computer Science, University of Strathclyde, Livingstone Tower, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow, UK

A database should be an accurate model of that part of the universe which it represents. However, this is rarely achieved. Errors in the data occur for a variety of reasons. Various techniques have been developed to reduce such errors and/or to detect them when they occur. Some of these techniques are concerned with checking that the data is ‘sensible’, i.e. that is complies with certain constraints which are derived from our knowledge of the semantics of that part of the universe which is represented by the data. Such constraints are called semantic integrity constraints; an example is: ‘no-one may be their own father’. Ideally, a database implementor should be able to specify a set of semantic constraints and then let the system enforce them automatically. Some progress has been made towards this ideal. However, the constraint definition languages which have been developed tend to by syntactically complex, and the enforcement of constraints is often carried out in an ad hoc manner. An alternative approach is proposed in this paper. We present a simple constraint definition language, SCHEMAL, and show how constraints expressed in it can be enforced automatically. We describe in detail the algorithm which is used to enforce SCHEMAL constraints. The methods has been fully implemented at the University of Strathclyde.

Received April 1982.

* Department of Computer Science, University of Strathclyde, Livingstone Tower, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XH, UK


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.