Chain Table: Protecting Table-Level Data Integrity by Digital Ledger Technology

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lightweight in-database 'chain table' design that ensures table-level data integrity using principles inspired by blockchain technology, avoiding the complexity of full blockchain systems.

Contribution

It presents a novel, efficient in-database structure called chain table that guarantees data integrity without requiring a full blockchain implementation.

Findings

Chain table guarantees flexible table-level data integrity.

The design is succinct with minimal technology barriers.

The approach avoids significant storage overhead.

Abstract

The rise of blockchain and Digital Ledger Technology (DLT) has gained wide traction. Instead of relying on a traditional centralized data authority, a blockchain system consists of digitally entangled block data shared across a distributed network. The specially designed chain data structure and its consensus mechanism protect blockchain data from being tampered by unauthorized adversaries. However, implementing a full-fledged blockchain system to protect a database can be technically cumbersome. In this work, we introduce an in-database design, named chain table, to protect data integrity without the need for a blockchain system. It features a succinct design without significant technology barriers or storage overhead. To realize rigorous data security, we also propose a set of data writing principles for the chain table. We prove that the chain table, together with the data writing principles, will guarantee flexible data integrity, named table-level data integrity (TDI).