Relational and Object-Oriented Methodology in Data Bases Systems

Database programming languages integrate concepts of databases and programming languages to provide both implementation tools for data-intensive applications and high-level user interfaces to databases. Frequently, database programs contain a large amount of application knowledge which is hidden in the procedural code and thus difficult to maintain with changing data and user views. This paper presents a first attempt to improve the situation by supporting the integrated definition and management of data and rules based on a setoriented and predicative approach. The use of database technology for integrated fact and rule base management is shown to have some important advantages in terms of fact and rule integrity, question-answering, and explanation of results.