EECA: An active knowledge model

Abstract

General purpose triggers are central to active database management systems, along with knowledge in the form of production rules. The predominant knowledge model is based on Event-Condition-Action (ECA) triples. Our research has found this model to be limiting and inefficient in both operation and declaration clarity as it causes unnecessary replication of rules. An extension is proposed to the ECA knowledge model to permit a semantically concise and precise declaration of the knowledge. This extension (EECA) has been integrated into the REFLEX active database prototype. This paper reports on the EECA model and gives an overview of the REFLEX model, its architecture and novel features.