Index support for rule activation

Abstract

Integrated rule and database systems are quickly moving from the research laboratory into commercial systems. However, the current generation of prototypes are designed to work with small rule sets involving limited inferencing. The problem of supporting large complex rule programs within database management systems still presents significant challenges. The basis for many of these challenges is providing support for rule activation. Rule activation is defined as the process of determining which rules are satisfied and what data satisfies them. In this paper we present performance results for the DATEX database rule system and its novel indexing technique for supporting rule activation. Our approach assumes that both the rule program and the database must be optimized synergistically. However, as an experimental result we have determined that DATEX requires very few changes to a standard DBMS environment, and we argue that these changes are reasonable for the problems being solved. Based on the performance of DATEX we believe we have demonstrated a satisfactory solution to the rule activation problem for complex rule programs operating within a database system.