Reasoning about the Future in Blockchain Databases

2020 IEEE 36th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 DOI:10.1109/ICDE48307.2020.00206

Sara Cohen, Adam Rosenthal, Aviv Zohar

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引用次数: 5

Abstract

A key difference between using blockchains to store data and centrally controlled databases is that transactions are accepted to a blockchain via a consensus mechanism, and not by a controlling central party. Hence, once a user has issued a transaction, she cannot be certain if it will be accepted. Moreover, a yet unaccepted transaction cannot be retracted by the user, and may (or may not) be appended to the blockchain at any point in the future. This causes difficulties as the user may wish to formulate new transactions based on the knowledge of which previous transactions will be accepted. Yet this knowledge is inherently uncertain.We introduce a formal abstraction for blockchains as a data storage layer that underlies a database. The main issue that we tackle is the need to reason about possible worlds, due to the uncertainty in transaction appending. In particular, we consider the theoretical complexity of determining whether it is possible for a denial constraint to be contradicted, given the current state of the blockchain, pending transactions, and integrity constraints on blockchain data. We then present practical algorithms for this problem that work well in practice.

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关于区块链数据库未来的推理

使用区块链存储数据和中央控制的数据库之间的一个关键区别是，交易是通过共识机制接受的，而不是由控制的中央方接受的。因此，一旦用户发出了一笔交易，她就不能确定这笔交易是否会被接受。此外，用户不能收回尚未接受的事务，并且可能(也可能不会)在将来的任何时候追加到区块链。这就造成了困难，因为用户可能希望在了解哪些以前的交易将被接受的基础上制定新的交易。然而，这种认识本身就是不确定的。我们为区块链引入了一种正式的抽象，作为数据库底层的数据存储层。我们处理的主要问题是，由于交易附加的不确定性，需要对可能的世界进行推理。特别是，我们考虑了在给定区块链数据的当前状态、待处理事务和完整性约束的情况下，确定拒绝约束是否可能被矛盾的理论复杂性。然后，我们提出了实用的算法来解决这个问题，在实践中效果很好。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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2020 IEEE 36th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE)

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