Automated elicitation of inclusion dependencies from the source code for database transactions

Abstract

AbstractInclusion dependency is an important data dependency in databases. Enforcement of data dependencies is a major component in any database application. Due to the nature of software development and maintenance and the limitation of database management systems (DBMSs) in handling the enforcement of inclusion dependency, many inclusion dependencies are enforced not through the DBMS, but through the transactions that update the database. It is very difficult and time consuming to elicit (to extract or to recover) inclusion dependencies from transactions manually during the reengineering, verification and maintenance of database applications. With the use of program analysis, this paper proposes a novel approach for the automated elicitation of inclusion dependencies from the source code of transactions that update the database. The approach is based on detecting program path patterns for enforcing inclusion dependency. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.