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ESPRIT WG CONTESSA Workshop on Constraint Databases and Applications

CDB 1995: Constraint Databases and Application pp 132–147Cite as

Ambiguity for referential integrity is undecidable

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1034))

Abstract

SQL has grown to be the language for relational database systems. One vital element of the relational model is referential integrity. This type of integrity constraints is now included in the new SQL2 standard [11] with capabilities to react on violations of specified integrity constraints. These reactions may lead to indeterminism with respect to the outcome of a user operation which is also known from the usage of rules or triggers. In the database context, however, such ambiguities are undesirable. Hence, for each submitted operation one must check whether or not an ambiguity occurs, and in the former case rollback the operation. Since such checks are time consuming, one might consider performing them only for schemas which bear the risk of an indeterminism. This paper shows that it is undecidable whether or not a schema may have an instance leading to ambiguities. Therefore, unnecessary checks cannot be avoided in general.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Kaiserslautern, P.O. Box 3049, 67653, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Joachim Reinert

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  1. Joachim Reinert
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Gabriel Kuper Mark Wallace

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Reinert, J. (1996). Ambiguity for referential integrity is undecidable. In: Kuper, G., Wallace, M. (eds) Constraint Databases and Application. CDB 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1034. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60794-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60794-3_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60794-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49456-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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