Model Checking Active Database Rules under Various Rule Processing Strategies

An active database is a database system that can react to internal, as well as external, database events. The reactive behavior of an active database is determined by a predefined set of active database rules, along with a rule processing strategy. A common problem associated with active database systems is the possible non-termination of the active database rules. Previous work on the analysis of the conditions required for the termination of active database rules has only considered limited rule processing strategies. This paper proposes an approach for automatically detecting the non-termination of active database rules using a model checking technique. With this approach, a general framework for modeling active database systems is first proposed. This framework is useful for analyzing the behavior of rules with different rule processing strategies and for allowing the adoption of different contexts and different execution coupling modes for the active database rules. Based on the proposed modeling framework, the termination property of active database rules with various rule processing strategies is next checked using SPIN, a model checking tool. Through experimental results, we demonstrated the feasibility of using this method.