Semantic data engineering for generalized databases

Current trends in database research emphasize the development of new tools for improved semantics definition and manipulation. It stresses the need for expert knowledge integration in database applications and distributed information usage. Of particular interest today is also the cooperation of artificial intelligence techniques and database technology. This paper presents a new method for database and knowledge base integrity control based on object-oriented concepts and on logic programming. It uses a novel technique for semantic integrity enforcement in database applications, based on the notions of object prototypes and database sample. A prototype is an incomplete object instance created dynamically in the database. It is representative of the family defined by an object declaration in the database schema. A database sample is a set of prototypes. It is used for the certification, i.e the control of the correctness, of all user operations concerning the definition and the modification of the database schema and the data.