Active rules provide a new and important method for designing databases and the subject is seeing an increasing amount of attention from commercial database companies. This book provides a timely survey of the field from the point of view of some of the subject's most active researchers.

The book is divided into several parts, organized by theme: the first, Fundamentals covers the underlying methodology reagrding active rules, next comes a collection of chapters which cover formal specification, rule analysis, performance analysis, and support tools, the third part is devoted to a number of chapters covering the implementation of active rules in anumber of commercial systems. Finally, come sections on applications and future directions that research may take.

All researchers in databases will find this provides a valuable overview of this topic.