Active databases, which support active rules and triggers to enable the database system to respond to

new events in an intelligent and timely fashion. The actions taken include logging of important events,
warnings sent to other systems or supervisors, and corrective actions to enforce the integrity and
security of the information stored in the database.
Many difficult research problems, however, remain unsolved for active databases, hindering the
deployment of this powerful technology.
The existence of several activation semantics for rules represents one problem. Another is the
difficulty of controlling and predicting the behavior of large sets of rules, leading to unexpected
behaviors such as nontermination.
Chapters 2 and 3 of this book provide a thorough introduction to active database rules and their
problems. Then, in Chapter 4, a methodology is presented for the analysis and design of active rules
for reliable applications.
Chapter 5 of this book illustrates the difficulties that a developer encounters when implementing in
SQL an information system that provides the temporal support required by many application areasincluding accounting, banking, inventory control, econometrics, law, medical records, airline
reservations, and geographic information systems.