Integrity Constraint Enforcement through Transaction Modification

The complexity of modern database applications requires powerful integrity maintenance facilities in the context of transaction processing. This paper proposes a mechanism for integrity constraint handling based on transaction modification. This mechanism conforms to the complete transaction model, complying with transaction atomicity and serializability. Further, the technique can be integrated into the normal query processing strategy of a relational DBMS, and can thus easily be applied in a real world system; this is shown for the PRISMA parallel database system. Transaction modification is fit for handling a large class of constraints and provides a high degree of flexibility and extensibility.