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ECA Rules

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Event-condition-action rules; Reactive rules; Triggers

Definition

An ECA rule has three parts: an event, a condition, and an action. The semantics of an ECA rule are when the event has been detected, evaluate the condition, and if the condition is satisfied, execute the action.

Historical Background

ECA rules are used within active databases for supporting reactive behavior and were first proposed in the HiPAC project [2].

Foundations

The semantics of an ECA rule is straightforward: when an event is detected, evaluate the condition, and if the condition is true, then execute the action. There are a number of reasons why the reactive behavior is abstracted to three different parts [1]:

First of all, events, conditions, and actions have different roles. An event specifies when to trigger a rule, a condition specifies what to check, and an action specifies what to execute in response to the event. Thus, the semantics of an ECA rule is clean and avoids ad hoc mixing of events,...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Dayal U. Ten years of activity in active database systems: what have we accomplished? In: Proceedings of the first international workshop on active and real-time database systems; 1995. p. 3–22.

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  2. Dayal U, Blaustein B, Buchmann A, et al. S.C. HiPAC: a research project in active, time-constrained database management. Technical report. CCA-88-02. Cambridge, MA: Xerox Advanced Information Technology; 1988.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden

    Mikael Berndtsson & Jonas Mellin

Authors
  1. Mikael Berndtsson
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  2. Jonas Mellin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mikael Berndtsson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

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

    Ling Liu

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

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

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© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

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Berndtsson, M., Mellin, J. (2017). ECA Rules. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_504-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_504-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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