A Framework for Records Management in Relational Database Systems
Ahmed A. Ataullah · UWSpace (University of Waterloo) · 2008
I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. I authorize the University of Waterloo to lend this thesis to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I further authorize the University of Waterloo to reproduce this thesis by photo-copying or by other means, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. iii The problem of records retention is often viewed as simply deleting records when they have outlived their purpose. However, in the world of relational databases there is no standardized notion of a business record and its retention obligations. Unlike physical documents such as forms and reports, information in databases is organized such that one item of data may be part of various legal records and consequently subject to several (and possibly conflicting) retention policies. This thesis proposes a framework for records retention in relational database systems. It presents a mech-