A Relaxed Approach to Integrity and Inconsistency in Databases

We demonstrate that many, though not all integrity checking methods are able to tolerate inconsistency, without having been aware of it. We show that it is possible to use them to beneficial effect and without further ado, not only for preserving integrity in consistent databases, but also in databases that violate their constraints. This apparently relaxed attitude toward integrity and inconsistency stands in contrast to approaches that are much more cautious wrt the prevention, identification, removal, repair and tolerance of inconsistent data that violate integrity. We assess several well-known methods in terms of inconsistency tolerance and give examples and counter-examples thereof.

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