Active Rules in a Graph Database Environment

Abstract

With the rapid growth of data nowadays, new types of database systems are emerging in order to handle big data, known as NoSQL databases. One type of NoSQL databases is graph database, which uses the graph model to present data and the relationships among data. Existing graph database systems are passive compared to traditional relational database systems that allow automatic event handling through active rules. This paper describes our approach of incorporating active rules into graph databases, allowing users to specify business logic in a declarative manner. The active system has been built on top of a passive graph database to react to events automatically. Our focus is to specify business rules declaratively rather than enforce integrity constraint using rules. Our system consists of a language framework and an execution model. Language specification will further be illustrated by on a motivating example that shows the use of rules in an application context. The paper also describes the design and implementation of the execution model in detail.