ON THE LINKAGE OF DYNAMIC TABLES IN RELATIONAL DBMSS

Tables and operations over tables are at the center of the relational model and have been at the core of the Structured Query Language (SQL) since ifs development in the 1970s. As database applications have gro wn rapidly, the concept of fables has been generalized in database lan guages. The new generalized fable concept in the SQL standard and in s ome commercial databases includes explicitly defined derived tables, s uch as user-defined temporary tables, transition tables, user-defined table functions, and table locators, that can be manipulated by users. We call them dynamic tables, because their entities exist only at run time. The challenges that these dynamic fables pose to existing relat ional engines lie in the linkage between the creation of the derived t able and its references. In this paper, we describe a uniform framewor k for compile-time and run-time processing of dynamic tables. We also give a thorough explanation of how such a generic framework can be rea lized in existing relational database management systems, such as ISM DATABASE 2(TM) Common Server. Our experience with our prototype has sh own the simplicity, generality, and efficiency of our approach.