Integrity Mechanisms in Database Management Systems

Our goal in this paper is to answer the following question: what mechanisms are required in a general-purpose multiuser database management system (DBMS) to facilitate the integrity objectives of information systems? We are particularly interested in relational DBMS's. Although existing commercial products fall far short of providing the requisite mechanisms, in principle they can be easily extended to incorporate these mechanisms. In a nutshell our conclusion is that realistic mechanisms do exist. Our principal contribution is to identify these mechanisms, ll in the gaps where none existed and point out where gaps still remain. We have also bridged the terminology and concepts of database and security specialists in a coherent manner.