出版社：International Association for Computer Information Systems
摘要：Integrity, in database terms, is the quality of trustworthiness that the data in a database is imbued with; high levels of integrity reassure all users of a database system that they can rely on the information they retrieve from the system. It is axiomatic that integrity is crucial to accountants that use and audit such systems because no one would use or rely on a suspect accounting system. One of the most interesting types of integrity concerns is adherence to business rules; those standard operating procedures and policies that dictate how an organization conducts transactions in its business environment. While such rules can be enforced in programs that use the database, if the business rules are implemented within the database, they need not be recreated when new applications are developed but will be automatically enforced for all applications. This practice is ever more widely adopted both because it saves programmers' wages and because it inherently increases the overall integrity of systems adopting it. Two mechanisms for enforcement of business rules at the database level are constraints and triggers. These may be of particular interest and importance to auditors who, given that they are confident of their understanding of the function of such mechanisms, may simply review the triggers and constraints and possibly decide to place greater reliance on the system itself, saving auditor time and increasing the quality of the audit. This paper explains and illustrates trigger and constraint design approaches so as to inform the auditor and facilitate audits involving such systems.
关键词：Triggers; active databases; database constraints; business rules; database design
