Optimising active database rules by partial evaluation and abstract interpretation

Abstract

A key issue for active databases is optimising the execution event-condition-action rules. In this paper we show how partial evaluation provides a formal and general route to optimising such rules.We produce a specialised version of the rule execution semantics for each possible sequence of actions that may execute from the current database state. This gives the opportunity to optimise rule execution for each particular sequence of actions. We obtain information about possible sequences of rule executions actions by applying abstract interpretation to the rule execution semantics. Our techniques are applicable both statically, i.e. at rule compilation time, and dynamically, during rule execution.