On transaction boundaries in active databases: a performance perspective

A performance model designed for studying active DBMS performance issues is described. The authors present the results of simulation experiments in which system performance was studied as a function of transaction boundary semantics for varying levels of data contention, rule complexity, and data sharing between externally submitted tasks and rule management tasks. The results demonstrate that the way in which transaction boundaries are imposed can have a major impact on the performance of an active DBMS. It is therefore concluded that this aspect of rule semantics must be carefully considered at the time that rules are specified