The variant execution time of the update operation repair rules in a parallel and distributed environment is highly affected by the way the rules and tables settled in a database in according to whether they were partitioned or not. The well- known partitioning methods in the database were succeeded to reduce the response time of update operations since they expeditiously execute the update operation affecting different sites of partitions. These methods are mortgaged by the determination of the type of partitioning during the design state of the system fixing all sites of the partitioned tables and distributed rules to different nodes. Although distribution and partitioning have these merits, it still face some restrictions since it may be time consuming for the distributed system to locate the proper rule and the partition of data, which fulfill the requirement of repair update operation. This paper proposes virtual rule partition method. This method has more advantages over the classical methods because it allows us to reduce the total cost or the total response time consumed by repair update operations using horizontal partitioned tables.

[1] Grefen P. W. “Integrity Control in Parallel Database Systems,” PhD Thesis, University of Twente, Netherlands, October 1992.

[2] Hanandeh F. A., Ibrahim H., and Muda Z., “A Strategy for Semantic Integrity Maintenance for Parallel Relational Database Systems,” in Proceedings of the 2002 International Arab Conference on Information Technology (ACIT'2002), Qatar, vol. 2, pp. 714-719, December 2002.

[3] Ibrahim H., “Extending Transactions with Integrity Rules for Maintaining Database Integrity,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Knowledge Engineering (IKE'02), USA, pp. 341-347, June 2002.

[4] Ibrahim H., “Semantic Integrity Constraints Enforcement for Distributed Database,” PhD Thesis, University of Wales Cardiff, June 1998.

[5] Jaime A. A., “Mixed Fragmentation Strategy in a General Purpose Parallel Databases System,” Second National Encounter of Computation ENC99, Mexican Society of Sciences of the Computation and Mexican Society of Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo, Mexico, September 1999.

[6] McCarroll N. F., “Semantic Integrity Enforcement in Parallel Database Machines,” PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, May 1995.

[7] Ozsu M. T. and Valduriez P., Principles of Distributed Database Systems, Prentice Hall, 1991.

[8] Seong-Jin P. and Bair D., “A Data Allocation Considering Data Availability in Distributed Database Systems,” International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Korea, pp. 708-713, 1997.

[9] Thomas J. and Waston R., “A Fractional Data Allocation Method for Distributed Databases,” in Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Information Systems, NY, USA, pp.168-175, September 1994.

[10] Wang X. Y., “The Development of a Knowledge- Based Transaction Design Assistant,” PhD Thesis, Department of Computing Mathematics, University of Wales College of Cardiff, Cardiff, UK, 1992. Feras Hanandeh obtained his BSc in computer science from Yarmouk University, Jordan in 1993, MSc in computer science from University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia in 2000. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at University Putra Malaysia. His research interest includes parallel databases and logic programming. He has published a number of papers related to these areas. Hamidah Ibrahim obtained her PhD from the University of Wales, Cardiff in 1998. Currently, she is a lecturer at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University Putra Malaysia. Her research areas include distributed databases and knowledge based system. She has published a number of papers related to these areas. Ali Mamat is an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at University Putra Malaysia. He obtained his PhD in 1992. His research interest includes databases, logic programming and knowledge base. Rozita Johari obtained her BSc in computer science and mathematics from Pittsburg State University, Kansas in 1986, MSc in computer science from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago in 1987 and completed her PhD at University Putra Malaysia.