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Don't go gaga with GIGO

Hendrik Decker, Davide Martinenghi

TL;DR

This work revisits integrity checking in relational and deductive databases with an approach that tolerates erroneous, inconsistent data, and formally characterize this property, that is called inconsistency tolerance, and state its validity for some well-known methods for integrity checking.

Abstract

We revisit integrity checking in relational and deductive databases with an approach that tolerates erroneous, inconsistent data. In particular, we relax the fundamental prerequisite that, in order to apply any method for simplified integrity checking, all data must initially have integrity. As opposed to a long-standing belief, integrity in the old state before the update is not needed for a correct application of simplification methods. Rather, we show that correct simplifications preserve what was consistent across updates. We formally characterize this property, that we call inconsistency tolerance, and state its validity for some well-known methods for integrity checking.

Don't go gaga with GIGO

TL;DR

This work revisits integrity checking in relational and deductive databases with an approach that tolerates erroneous, inconsistent data, and formally characterize this property, that is called inconsistency tolerance, and state its validity for some well-known methods for integrity checking.

Abstract

We revisit integrity checking in relational and deductive databases with an approach that tolerates erroneous, inconsistent data. In particular, we relax the fundamental prerequisite that, in order to apply any method for simplified integrity checking, all data must initially have integrity. As opposed to a long-standing belief, integrity in the old state before the update is not needed for a correct application of simplification methods. Rather, we show that correct simplifications preserve what was consistent across updates. We formally characterize this property, that we call inconsistency tolerance, and state its validity for some well-known methods for integrity checking.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 5 sections, 1 theorem, 2 equations.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Integrity checking, simplified
  3. Integrity checking, tolerant
  4. Related work
  5. Discussion

Key Result

Proposition 3.4

Let $\Gamma$ be an integrity theory, $U$ an update and $\phi$ a case of an IC in $\Gamma$. Any plain pre-test (resp., plain post-test) of $\Gamma$ for $U$ is an inconsistency-tolerant pre-test (resp., post-test) of $\Gamma$ for $U$.

Theorems & Definitions (10)

  • Definition 2.1: Post-test
  • Definition 2.2: Pre-test
  • Definition 2.3: Plain test
  • Example 2.1
  • Definition 3.1: Case
  • Definition 3.2: Inconsistency tolerance
  • Definition 3.3
  • Example 3.1: \ref{['ex:conflict-of-interests']} cont'd
  • Example 3.2
  • Proposition 3.4