Managing inter-database dependencies with 'rules+quasi-transactions'

In the context of software systems for telecommunication management networks, the problem of maintaining the consistency of interrelated distributed data has been tackled. The federated database approach best suits this environment characterized by multiple heterogeneous and autonomous DBMSs. The authors propose an inter-database dependencies specification and execution model; it is based on a rule paradigm typical of active database systems and on the 'quasi-transactions' model, relaxing some ACID properties. Different failure recovery mechanisms are provided. A prototype implementation is sketched using commercial distributed transaction and store and forward queuing mechanisms.<>