View Updates in Stratified Disjunctive Databases

J. Grant, J. Horty, J. Lobo, J. Minker

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Abstract

This paper is devoted to the problem of view updates in deductive databases. In this context, derived or intensional predicates correspond to the views of traditional relational databases. The view update problem is thus the problem of accomplishing the update of an intensional predicate by modifying appropriately the underlying relations in the extensional part of the database. We define here general algorithms for accomplishing view updates (both insertions and deletions) in disjunctive deductive databases; and we provide a semantic justification of the updates accomplished by these algorithms, making precise a sense in which they represent "minimal modifications" of the underlying database. We consider two kinds of updates: those involving the insertion or deletion of information into and from a disjunctive deductive database, and those involving the insertion or deletion of information into and from a stratified normal disjunctive database. Insertions into normal deductive databases may require the insertion of negative information.

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