RDBMS based Topic Map Constraint Checking Mechanism

Due to a growing interest in searching and expressing knowledge effectively, knowledge management methods such as Topic Map are becoming more important. Topic Map organizes knowledge that is full of intricate relations, so maintaining and managing Topic Map consistently is very essential. TMCL and other constraint languages have limits as they can check simple constraints but can not support complex constraints like dependence constraints. Current constraint checking systems operating at the application level are also showing an inferiority in performance. In this paper, we extend TMCL based on the characteristics of other constraint languages in the information system field and related fields. We build and propose an RDBMS-based Topic Map constraint checking system to support the extended constraint language effectively. This new system handles complex types of constraints like dependency constraint as well as basic Topic Map constraints present in the TMCL. As the system examines each constraint it uses templates to generate queries for effective checking and overall shows a higher performance level than current systems.