A Method for Change Computation in Deductive Databases

Change computation is an essential component in several capabilities of a deductive database, such as integrity constraints checking, materialized view maintenance and condition monitoring. In this paper, we present a general method for change computation, which is based on the use of transition and internal events rules. These rules explicitly define the insertions, deletions and modifications induced by a database update. Standard SLDNF resolution can be used to compute the induced changes, but other procedures could be used as well. Our method generalizes and extends previous work on change computation methods, and in some cases computes changes in a more efficient way. 1 Introduction Deductive databases generalize relational databases by including not only base predicates (or relations), but also derived predicates (or views). A derived predicate is defined by means of one or more deductive rules. In a deductive database, an update to base predicates may induce changes on one or ..