RBE - A RULE-BY-EXAMPLE ACTIVE DATABASE SYSTEM

In an active database system, rules are used to monitor and respond to events that happen inside the database. This paper presents the imple mentation of an active database system called RBE. The system loosely couples an OPS5 production system and an INGRES database management sy stem to efficiently monitor databases on complex conditions. In this s ystem, a table-based Rule-By-Example (RBE) language, is designed. The internal representations of the RBE rule language are production rules ; therefore, rules can be stored, managed and tested efficiently by us ing the well-developed pattern matching algorithm in a production syst em. In other words, the system applies a production system and a speci al production system program to the task of query rewrite trigger proc essing. Moreover, a user-friendly interface is used to loosely couple the OPS5 rule system with the INGRES DBMS. The architecture used in th is system shows the applicability of constructing an active database s ystem by integrating any production system and any database system. Mo reover, the proposed technique could be used as an implementation meth od for a query-rewrite rule system inside a DBMS server, not using a l ayered approach. (C) 1997 by John Whey & Sons, Ltd.