Constraint optimization for a system of relational databases

Constraint optimization in distributed databases is an important issue as it can reduce the amount of time needed to check for the violation of global constraints when updates are performed. In this paper we address techniques to achieve optimization of constraint checking process in distributed databases. We propose architecture for optimizing constraint checking process. This architecture exploits techniques of parallelism, compile time constraint checking, localized constraint checking and history of constraint violations. We also design an algorithm which acts as a backbone to the architecture. This algorithm achieves efficiency in terms of time. Further, as a proof of concept we implement the architecture and algorithm using a mobile agent based approach. Our performance evaluations indicate a significant savings in response times and number of sites checked because of constraint optimization.