Active Views for Electronic Commerce
Résumé
Electronic commerce is emerging as a major Web-supported application. In
this paper we argue that database technology can, and should, provide the back-bone
for a wide range of such applications. More precisely, we present here the
ActiveViews system, which, relaying on an extensive use of database features in-cluding
views, active rules (triggers), and enhanced mechanisms for notification,
access control and logging/tracing of users activities, provides the needed basis for
electronic commerce.
Based on the emerging XML standards (DOM, query languages for XML,
etc.), the system offers a novel declarative view specification language, describing
the relevant data and activities of all actors (e.g. vendors and clients) participat-ing
in electronic commerce activities . Then, acting as an application generator,
the system generates an actual, possibly customized, Web application that allows
users to perform the given set of controlled activities and to work interactively on
the specified data in a standard distributed environment.
Although closely related to workflow management systems, a major difference
here is the importance we give to data. While workflow systems give declarative
means for specifying the operations flow, the data involved is typically described
in a very abstract manner, often disconnected from the description of the flow
itself. In contrast, our approach promotes the data, acknowledging its importance
for optimization coherence and analysis of applications.
The ActiveView system is developed at INRIA on top of Ardent s XML repository
and Java.