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Inconsistent Databases

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Definition

An inconsistent database is a database instance that does not satisfy those integrity constraints that have been declared together with the schema of the database.

Historical Background

Already in the classical and seminal paper by E. F. Codd [5] on the relational data model it is possible to find the notions of integrity constraint and consistency of a database. The idea of consistent query answering, consisting in characterizing and computing semantically correct answers to queries in inconsistent databases, was explicitly introduced in [1].

Foundations

A database can be seen as a model, i.e., as a simplified, abstract description, of an external reality. In the case of relational databases, one starts by choosing certain predicates of a prescribed arity. The schema of the database consists of this set of predicates, possibly attributes, which can be seen as names for the arguments of the predicates, together with an indication of the domains where the attributes can take...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Arenas M, Bertossi L, Chomicki J. Consistent query answers in inconsistent databases. In: Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database Systems; 1999. p. 68–79.

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  2. Bertossi L. Consistent query answering in databases. ACM SIGMOD Rec. 2006;35(2):68–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Bertossi L, Chomicki J. Query answering in inconsistent databases. In: Logics for emerging applications of databases. Berlin: Springer; 2003. p. 43–83.

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  4. Chomicki J. Consistent query answering: five easy pieces. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Database Theory; 2007. p. 1–17.

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  5. Codd EF. A relational model of data for large shared data banks. Commun ACM. 1970;13(6):377–87.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Enderton H. A mathematical introduction to logic. 2nd ed. New York: Academic; 2001.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Leopoldo Bertossi

Authors
  1. Leopoldo Bertossi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Leopoldo Bertossi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Leonid Libkin

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Bertossi, L. (2018). Inconsistent Databases. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_1242

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