Integrated Treatment of Updates in Deductive Databases: the FOLRE Project (extended abstract)

We review in this paper both a framework for integrating the treatment of advanced update problems in deductive databases and the architecture of the FOLRE deductive database management system prototype, which extends the basic updating facilities provided by current deductive database systems. The distinguishing feature of our approach is the underlying integrative framework used to specify and combine advanced update problems such as view updating and materialization, integrity checking and maintenance, or condition monitoring; both for on-line updates and predefined transactions. Based upon such a framework, FOLRE bears an architecture consisting of a deductive front-end that takes care of any updating task, working on a preexisting deductive back-end that handles all storage, retrieval and transaction management issues.