Re-looking at the View Update Problem

Abstract

Relational databases have always had a means for creating a pseudo-table, called a view, defined by a query. Views are like tables in most ways, except that they are read-only and cannot be updated. The problem of how to update views has attracted a lot of attention in the 1980s but is unsolved. The best approach from that time was by Bancilhon and Spyratos. I use one of their overlooked theorems and find a number of simple solutions for common relational operators.