Metrics for active database maintainability

摘要

Databases are becoming more complex and it is necessary to measure schemata complexity in order understand, monitor, control, predict and improve software development and maintenance projects. Active databases are a case in point where several reports warned the difficulties to cope with large rule sets. This paper proposes three different metrics for measuring active databases complexity, based on the difficulty to ascertain the casuses that make a given rule to be triggered. The measurement theory is used to characterise these metrics.