EXTENDING RELATIONAL DATABASE TECHNOLOGY FOR NEW APPLICATIONS

Relational database systems have been very successful in meeting the n eeds of today's commercial applications. However, emerging application s in disciplines such as engineering design are now generating new req uirements for database functionality and performance. This paper descr ibes a set of extensions to relational database technology, designed t o meet the requirements of the new generation of applications. These e xtensions include a rich and extensible type subsystem that is tightly integrated into the Structured Query Language (SOL), a rules subsyste m to enforce global database semantics, and a variety of performance e nhancements. Many of the extensions described here have been prototype d at the IBM Database Technology Institute and in research projects at the IBM Almaden Research Center in order to demonstrate their feasibi lity and to validate their design. Furthermore, many of these extensio ns are now under consideration as part of the evolving American Nation al Standards Institute/International Organization for Standardization (ANSI/ISO) standard for the SOL database language.