A framework for declarative updates and constraint maintenance in object-oriented databases

A framework for supporting ad-hoc declarative update requests in an object-oriented database (OODB) while maintaining database consistency and atomicity of update requests is described. The framework is based on the emulation of classic update methods in an OODB by a controlled, active, and user-transparent interaction between a predefined set of elementary updates and a set of integrity methods designed to maintain database consistency upon violations of integrity constraints. Given an object-oriented data model and a declarative query language, this framework is extended by isolating declaratively stated integrity constraints as a separate concept, developing a high-level update language on top of the query language, and developing active integrity methods from the integrity constraints. The advantage of this approach is that users can freely pose declarative ad-hoc updates without jeopardizing database consistency