A transaction transformation approach to active rule processing

Describes operational aspects of a novel approach to active rule processing based on a transaction transformation technique. A user-defined transaction, which is viewed as a sequence of atomic database updates forming a semantic unit, is translated by means of active rules into a new transaction that explicitly includes the additional updates due to active rule processing. It follows that the execution of the new transaction in a passive environment corresponds to the execution of the original transaction within the active environment defined by the given rules. Both immediate and deferred execution models are considered. The approach presents two main features. First, it relies on a well known formal basis that allow us to derive solid results on equivalence, confluence and optimization issues. Second, it is easy to implement as it does not require any specific run-time support