Optimal update policies for distributed materialized views

In this paper the authors present an analysis of the problem of determining optimal policies for updating distributed materialized views. They demonstrate the general application of materialized views, and define the concept of materialized view currency and allow a query to specify its currency requirement. The authors also allow a materialized view to be updated from either a base relation or another materialized view. This flexibility provides an opportunity for further reduction in the cost of maintaining distributed materialized views. The authors model the problem of optimal update policies to capture currency and policy constraints, replicated data, and various view update policies. The optimization incorporates a minimum-cost objective function as well as user’s response time constraints.