Behaviour Specification in Database

Abstract. We discuss the impact of locally implemented behavi0ur in a federation of object-oriented databases. In particular, given a specifi-cation of an integrated view of a number of component databases, we discuss the process of determining the global methods that are implic-itly implemented by a given set of local methods on these component databases. To this end, we develop the notions of objectivity and sub-jecti~i~y of local methods, indicating whether the execution of a local method affects the global view exactly as it affects the local database, behaviour equivalences between local methods, indicating whether local methods of different components have similar effect, and behaviour con-currences, indicating whether local methods respond to the same event. 1 In t roduct ion So far, database interoperation research as focused on the structural aspects of data integration. Even though the use of an object-oriented data model as the canonical model for interoperation has been widely advocated [6], attention fo