SYSTEM FOR MAINTAINING THE INTEGRITY OF APPLICATION DATA

The system for maintaining the integrity of application data functions to provide a mechanism to generate safe and efficient database transactions. This is accomplished by minimizing the number of constraints applied to the data stored in the database by segmenting the database into two portions: a set of base data objects and a set of view data objects. The base data objects comprise a set of data that is normalized to reduce the need for complex integrity checks. The set of view data objects represents views of the base data objects as presented in a form needed by the various applications extant in the processor. The system for maintaining the integrity of application data enables the applications to access both the view data objects the base data objects, but to effect a change in the data contained therein, access via an integrity checking process is only provided to the base data objects. The system for maintaining the integrity of application data updates the base data objects using integrity checks, which updates are then propagated to the view data objects to maintain the currency and consistency of these view data objects. The definitions of the various views are architected to capture the semantics of the derived data so there is no need for integrity constraints in the view data objects. Therefore, whatever integrity constraints are necessary are imposed only on the normalized base data objects when modifications to the data stored therein are requested, thereby minimizing the complexity of updates.