Using Business Rules within a Design Process of Active Databases

Modeling behavior is an important task of the information system engineering process. This task is especially important when information systems are centered on active databases, which allow the replacement of parts of application programs with active rules. To relieve programmers from using either traditional or ad hoc techniques to design active databases, it is necessary to develop new techniques to model business rules. For that reason, inclusion of rules during analysis and design stages becomes an actual requirement. In this paper, we propose a uniform approach to modeling business rules (active rules, integrity constraints, etc. ). To improve the behavior specification, we extend the state diagrams that are widely used for dynamic modeling. This extension is a transformation of state transitions according to rule semantics. In addition, we outline new functionalities of Computer Aided System Engineering (CASE) to take into consideration the active database specificities. In this way, the designer can be assisted to control, maintain, and reuse a set of rules.

[1]  Grady Booch,et al.  Object-Oriented Design with Applications , 1990 .

[2]  Eric N. Hanson,et al.  An initial report on the design of Ariel DBMS with an integrated production rule system , 1989, SGMD.

[3]  Narain H. Gehani,et al.  Composite Event Specification in Active Databases: Model & Implementation , 1992, VLDB.

[4]  Klaus R. Dittrich,et al.  Supporting Semantic Rules by a Generalized Event/Trigger Mechanism , 1988, EDBT.

[5]  Asterio Kiyoshi Tanaka.  On conceptual design of active databases , 1992 .

[6]  Michael Schrefl,et al.  Active object-oriented database design using active object/behavior diagrams , 1994, Proceedings of IEEE International Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering: Active Databases Systems.

[7]  T. A. Mueck,et al.  Design support for initiatives and policies in conceptual models of information systems/spl minus/a Statechart approach , 1994, 1994 Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[8]  Sungwoon Choi,et al.  Active Object System , 1991 .

[9]  Youssef Amghar,et al.  Designing Databases Using the Activity Paradigm , 1996, ADBIS.

[10]  Anne Banks Pidduck,et al.  An electronic commerce framework for small and medium size enterprises , 2002 .

[11]  Umeshwar Dayal,et al.  The HiPAC project: combining active databases and timing constraints , 1988, SGMD.

[12]  Hamid Pirahesh,et al.  Extensions to Starburst: objects, types, functions, and rules , 1991, CACM.

[13]  David Harel,et al.  On visual formalisms , 1988, CACM.

[14]  Alan M. Davis,et al.  A comparison of techniques for the specification of external system behavior , 1988, CACM.

[15]  Jennifer Widom,et al.  Static analysis techniques for predicting the behavior of active database rules , 1995, TODS.

[16]  Klaus R. Dittrich,et al.  Events in an Active Object-Oriented Database System , 1993, Rules in Database Systems.

[17]  Bongsik Shin,et al.  Data Mining: New Arsenal for Strategic Decision Making , 1999, J. Database Manag..

[18]  Elena Baralis,et al.  Modularization techniques for active rules design , 1996, TODS.

[19]  Jennifer Widom,et al.  Behavior of database production rules: termination, confluence, and observable determinism , 1992, SIGMOD '92.

[20]  Michael Stonebraker,et al.  On rules, procedure, caching and views in data base systems , 1990, SIGMOD '90.

[21]  David W. Embley,et al.  Object-oriented systems analysis - a model-driven approach , 1991, Yourdon Press Computing series.

[22]  G. M. Nijssen,et al.  Conceptual schema and relational database design - a fact oriented approach , 1989 .

[23]  Roberto Saracco,et al.  CCITT SDL: Overview of the Language and its Applications , 1987, Comput. Networks.