Database integrity : challenges and solutions

One of the driving forces that stimulated the emergence of database technology was the need to guarantee the quality of the data stored. The software design is impacted by the properties of the data. Data properties should be seen from a point of view as independently as possible from the representation model. In the database world, quality of data means that all those properties are adequately represented and preserved. Efficient maintenance of data integrity has become a critical problem since testing the validity of a large number of constraints in a large database, after each transaction is an expensive task. Geared toward designers and professionals interested in the conceptual aspects of integrity problems in different paradigms, this book addresses these and a variety of other issues.