Automatic and Graceful Repairing of Data Inconsistencies Resulting from Retroactive Updates in Temporal Xml Databases

Abstract

In temporal XML databases, a retroactive update (i.e., modifying or deleting a past element) due to a detected error means that the database has included erroneous information during some period and, therefore, its consistency should be restored by correcting all errors and inconsistencies that have occurred in the past. Indeed, all processing that have been carried out during the inconsistency period and have used erroneous information have normally produced erroneous information. In this paper, we propose an approach which preserves data consistency in temporal XML databases. More precisely, after any retroactive update, the proposed approach allows (i) detecting and analyzing periods of database inconsistency, which result from that update, and (ii) repairing of all inconsistencies and recovery of all side effects.

A systematic approach to efficiently managing the effects of retroactive updates of time-varying data in multiversion XML databases

“…Therefore, developers of applications that require guaranteeing the database consistency after each (retroactive) update transaction on this database should proceed in an ad hoc manner in order to resolve such a problem. In our previous work (Hamrouni et al, 2014a(Hamrouni et al, , 2014b, we have introduced an approach for automatically detecting and safely repairing data inconsistencies which appear after a retroactive update (involving some past data) in a temporal XML database that supports temporal schema versioning. But, since in these works we have focused only on 'what' is the problem and 'what' is the proposed solution, our approach was presented briefly without taking into account the following aspects: 1 providing more details concerning the overall architecture of our approach 2 explaining how inconsistencies are actually detected and repaired 3 dealing with the implementation of our approach in order to show that it is technically feasible.…”

“…1 We present a new enhanced version of the architecture of a multiversion temporal XML DBMS, proposed in our previous work (Hamrouni et al, 2014a(Hamrouni et al, , 2014b, which supports retroactive temporal XML updates under schema versioning and repairs efficiently their effects on the database consistency. More details are provided and some revisions and extensions are done on the initial version.…”

“…Bouaziz and Moalla (1998) have studied this aspect in temporal relational databases, but only for cumulative attributes (like the turnover of a company) in databases that do not support schema versioning. In our previous work (Hamrouni et al, 2014a(Hamrouni et al, , 2014b, we have proposed an approach for handling this issue. However, only the theoretical aspect of our approach was presented; there is no implementation as a proof-of-concept and there is not enough information on the approach in order to make it more useful and easily supported by the state-of-the-art database technology and by applications concerned with recovering the consistency of (multiversion temporal XML) databases after retroactive updates.…”

“…In this section, we describe in a detailed way our approach for repairing automatically and safely data inconsistencies resulting from retroactive updates in multiversion temporal XML databases (Hamrouni et al, 2014a(Hamrouni et al, , 2014b.…”

“…Moreover, in these databases schema evolve over time through successive and distinct temporal versions; each schema version is represented by an XML schema document to which some temporal XML documents are valid. In our previous work, we have addressed different aspects of multiversion temporal XML databases: temporal XML schema versioning (Brahmia et al, 2014), temporal XML data management (Brahmia and Bouaziz, 2009) and managing data inconsistencies that result from retroactive updates (Hamrouni et al, 2014a(Hamrouni et al, , 2014b. In this paper, we continue studying the last aspect.…”