pax

Currently active database systems (ADBMSs) are principally conceived as rather tightly integrated software systems. They are either realized as a part of monolithic DBMSs, or the active database mechanisms are provided as a layer that resides on top of traditional DBMSs. As these modules still can be coupled tightly with the underlying DBMS, the latter approach does not ensure that the respective modules are adapted easily to other DBMSs. Providing active database mechanisms as individual and customizable database services would therefore open the opportunity to use them in a variety of ways and environments. In that sense, this thesis investigates in the systematic provision of sophisticated active mechanisms in database or database-related environments and proposes an engineering approach to construct active database systems in a cost-effective way. In a first stage the basic concepts of active database management systems as well as the foundations of (Active) DBMS construction are discussed. These investigations enable the conclusion that the principal approach to be devised in this thesis relies best on decomposing ADBMSs into reusable components that are recombined later on into specific active database services. In a next step concise meta models to describe the software components and software architectures are elaborated, followed by the definition of specific reuse-oriented software processes to take ADBMSs apart into components and to build active database services out ofthese components. Subsequently a reference architecture underlying the prospective active database services is devised by applying specialized architecture design techniques. The reference architecture is specified formally by means of an architecture definition language. Techniques to transform the reference architecture into actual software components are conceived afterwards. The procedure consists of a method to specify components in an implementation-independent way, a technique to generalize them systematically and a process to develop the components with a chosen component infrastructure. In order to recombine the components into a coherent ensemble a method to specify the prospective active database service is devised as well as a schema to classify components and specific tools that assist the software engineer in the assembly of an active database service. Finally, a prototype has been implemented as a proof of concept.

A component framework to construct active database manageme...

A component framework to construct active database management systems

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