Conditional term rewriting as a formal basis for analysis of active database rules

Incorporating active capabilities in an object-oriented database requires a means to guarantee correctness and predictability of active rule behavior. The properties of termination and confluence are particularly important for a wide class of active database applications, including maintaining database consistency upon ad-hoc updates. We model active database rules as conditional term rewrite rules that rewrite the current database state. Rules communicate using messages that represent update requests and occurrences of events. By capturing database dynamics through conditional rewrites, the authors demonstrate the potential of using termination and confluence results developed for conditional term rewrite systems in the analysis of active database rules. These results can serve as a basis for establishing criteria for the development of well-behaved active database applications