integrity constraint checking in federated databases.pdfVIP

Integrity Constraint Checking in Federated Databases* Paul Grefen Jennifer Widom Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science University of Twente Stanford University 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands Stanford, CA 94305-2140 USA grefen@cs.utwente.nl widom@cs.stanford.edu Abstract Unfortunately, the lack of inter-site transaction mech- A federated database is comprised of multiple intercon- anisms in federated databases renders traditional con- nected databases that cooperate in an autonomous fash- straint checking mechanisms inapplicable. ion. Global integrity constraints are very useful in feder- This paper addresses the problem of integrity con- ated databases, but the lack of global queries, global trans- straint checking in federated databases with a three- action mechanisms, and global concurrency control renders fold contribution. First, the constraint checking prob- traditional constraint management techniques inapplicable. lem is formulated in the specific context of federated This paper presents a threefold contribution to integrity con- databases. In particular, an alternative notion of cor- straint checking in federated databases: (1) The problem rectness must be defined, since the transaction-based of constraint checking in a federated database environment approa