Active database systems have been a hot research topic for quite some years now. However, while “active functionality” has been claimed for many systems, and notions such as “active objects” or “events” are used in many research areas (even beyond database technology), it is not yet clear which functionality a database management system must support in order to be legitimately considered as an active system. In this paper, we attempt to clarify the notion of “active database management system” as well as the functionality it has to support. We thereby distinguish mandatory features that are needed to qualify as an active database system, and desired features which are nice to have. Finally, we perform a classification of applications of active database systems and identify the requirements for an active database management system in order to be applicable in these application areas.