Professional Documents
Culture Documents
and Applications
Progression of Database Technology
1960s to Mid- 1970s to Mid-1980s 1980s to Early 1990s Future
1970s
Data Model Network Relational Semantic Merging data models with
Hierarchical Object-oriented knowledge representation
Logic Hybrid models
Database Mainframes Mainframes Faster PCs Client-server configuration
Hardware Minis Workstations Parallel processing
PCs Database machines Optical memories
Back ends
User Interface None Query languages Graphics Multimedia
Forms Menus Natural languages
Query-by-forms Speech input
Freehand text
Program Procedural Embedded query Standardized SQL Integrated database and
Interface languages 4GL programming languages
Logic programming
• Active databases
– Applications such as process control, power
distribution/generation, workflow control, program
trading, battle management, patient monitoring are not
well served by passive DBMSs
– conditions defined on states of the database must be
monitored and actions taken
– active databases support condition monitoring
Active Databases
Payoffs:
• No changes to applications
• DBMS optimizes rules
• Enhances DBMS functionality
• Meet the time-constrained
requirements of applications
Issues in Active Databases
• Efficiency
– a large set of rules need to be managed and evaluated
efficiently
• Modes of rule execution
– rules can be fired in an immediate, deferred, or detached
mode in regard to the original transaction
• Data model extension
– specifying events, conditions, and actions
• events:
– database operations (insert, delete, modify)
– temporal events (5 p.m. every day)
– user- or application-generated events (hardware failure)
Issues in Active Databases
• Management of rules
– ability to manipulate rules (add/delete/modify)
– mechanisms for enabling and disabling rules or rule sets
• Supporting DBMS functions
– examples: constraint management, maintenance of
derived data, rule-based inferencing
• Interaction with parts of DBMS
– optimization of rules requires interaction with transaction
manager, object manager, and scheduler
State of the Art in Active
Databases
• HiPAC (High Performance ACtive database system)
research project at Xerox
• PROBE for battle management application (Computer
Corporation of America)
• Event/Trigger Mechanism (Univ. of Karlsruhe)
• POSTGRES (Stonebraker, UC Berkeley)
• Starburst project at IBM
• Sybase supports simple triggers
• InterBase does not impose most of the restrictions seen in
Sybase
• ORACLE v. 7, INGRES, INFORMIX, etc. provide some degree
of rule and trigger support
Multimedia Databases
• Applications:
– documents and records management
– knowledge dissemination
– education and training
– marketing, advertising, retailing, travel
– real-time control and monitoring
Multimedia Databases
• Indexing of images
– automatic object identification
– manual indexing
• Open problems in text retrieval