Synthesizing advanced transaction models using the situation calculus

  • Authors:

  • Iluju Kiringa;Alfredo Gabaldon

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Information Technology and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada;National ICT Australia, Sydney, Australia and School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Intelligent Information Systems
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

The situation calculus is a versatile logic for reasoning about actions and formalizing dynamic domains. Using the non-Markovian action theories formulated in the situation calculus, one can specify and reason about the effects of database actions under the constraints of the classical, flat database transactions, which constitute the state of the art in database systems. Classical transactions are characterized by the so-called ACID properties. With non-Markovian action theories, one can also specify, reason about, and even synthesize various extensions of the flat transaction model, generally called advanced transaction models (ATMs). In this paper, we show how to use non-Markovian theories of the situation calculus to specify and reason about the properties of ATMs. In these theories, one may refer to past states other than the previous one. ATMs are expressed as such non-Markovian theories using the situation calculus. We illustrate our method by specifying (and sometimes reasoning about the properties of) several classical models and known ATMs.