Simplified integrity checking for an expressive class of denial constraints

Abstract: Data integrity is crucial for ensuring data correctness and quality, maintained through integrity constraints that must be continuously checked, especially in data-intensive systems like OLTP. While DBMSs handle common constraints well, complex constraints often require ad-hoc solutions. Research since the 1980s has focused on automatic and simplified integrity constraint checking, leveraging the assumption that databases are consistent before updates. This paper discusses using program transformation operators to generate simplified integrity constraints, focusing on complex constraints expressed in denial form. In particular, we target a class of integrity constraints, called extended denials, which are more general than tuple-generating dependencies and equality-generating dependencies. These techniques can be readily applied to standard database practices and can be directly translated into SQL.