Concurrency control techniques and the KBMS Enviroment: A critical analysis.

Abstract

Knowledge Base Management Systems (KBMSs) are a new product generation with recognized applicability in several different areas, like medicine, geology, engineering design, robotics, etc. As long as this applicability is growing, the necessity for knowledge sharing is also becoming a crucial point to be taken into account by those systems. Thus, knowledge sharing and connectivity are going to be the key features of the intelligent information systems of the future. This means that many users should be able to access the KBMSs simultaneously. Nevertheless, arbitrary concurrent access to a resource can lead to many inconsistencies, and undesirable behavior. The main purpose of this paper is to identify the essential problems to be addressed by concurrency control techniques. Moreover, some of the well-known concurrency control techniques are investigated, and a critical analysis is made about their (in)adequacies, if they were to be directly applied to the KBMS environment.