A Toolkit for Constraint Management in Heterogeneous Information Systems

We present a framework and a toolkit to monitor and enforce distributed integrity constraints in loosely coupled heterogeneous information systems. Our framework enables and formalizes weakened notions of consistency, which are essential in such environments. Our framework is used to describe (1) interfaces provided by a database for the data items involved in intersite constraints; (2) strategies for monitoring and enforcing such constraints; (3) guarantees regarding the level of consistency the system can provide. Our toolkit uses this framework to provide a set of configurable modules that are used to monitor and enforce constraints spanning loosely coupled heterogeneous information systems. 1 Introduction We address the management of distributed integrity constraints over data that is stored in a collection of loosely coupled heterogeneous information systems. Distributed integrity constraints arise naturally whenever data that is semantically related is stored in different system..