This book is the first comprehensive survey of the field of constraint databases, written by leading researchers. Constraint databases are a fairly new and active area of database research. The key idea is that constraints, such as linear or polynomial equations, are used to represent large, or even infinite, sets in a compact way. The ability to deal with infinite sets makes constraint databases particularly promising as a technology for integrating spatial and temporal data with standard relational databases. Constraint databases bring techniques from a variety of fields, such as logic and model theory, algebraic and computational geometry, as well as symbolic computation, to the design and analysis of data models and query languages.

This is the first comprehensive survey of the field of constraint databases, written by leading researchers. Constraint databases are a fairly new and active area of database research. Their ability to deal with infinite sets makes them particularly promising as a technology for integrating spatial and temporal data with standard relational databases. Constraint databases bring techniques from a variety of fields, such as logic and model theory, algebraic and computational geometry, as well as symbolic computation, to the design and analysis of data models and query languages.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the ESPRIT Working Group CONTESSA Workshop on Constraint Databases and Applications, held in Friedrichshafen, Germany in September 1995.
The 10 full revised papers selected for inclusion in this volume are written by and for practitioners, researchers, and application users of core constraint database technology; they can be classified in three sections on expressiveness of the various constraint database models; implementation and optimization issues in areas like spatial databases, geographic information systems, scheduling and routing. This book is the first to focus on the extension of the important new programming paradigm of constraint processing to database design and management.