11,278 research outputs found
A Database Interface for Complex Objects
We describe a formal design for a logical query language using psi-terms as data structures to interact effectively and efficiently with a relational database. The structure of psi-terms provides an adequate representation for so-called complex objects. They generalize conventional terms used in logic programming: they are typed attributed structures, ordered thanks to a subtype ordering. Unification of psi-terms is an effective means for integrating multiple inheritance and partial information into a deduction process. We define a compact database representation for psi-terms, representing part of the subtyping relation in the database as well. We describe a retrieval algorithm based on an abstract interpretation of the psi-term unification process and prove its formal correctness. This algorithm is efficient in that it incrementally retrieves only additional facts that are actually needed by a query, and never retrieves the same fact twice
Schema Independent Relational Learning
Learning novel concepts and relations from relational databases is an
important problem with many applications in database systems and machine
learning. Relational learning algorithms learn the definition of a new relation
in terms of existing relations in the database. Nevertheless, the same data set
may be represented under different schemas for various reasons, such as
efficiency, data quality, and usability. Unfortunately, the output of current
relational learning algorithms tends to vary quite substantially over the
choice of schema, both in terms of learning accuracy and efficiency. This
variation complicates their off-the-shelf application. In this paper, we
introduce and formalize the property of schema independence of relational
learning algorithms, and study both the theoretical and empirical dependence of
existing algorithms on the common class of (de) composition schema
transformations. We study both sample-based learning algorithms, which learn
from sets of labeled examples, and query-based algorithms, which learn by
asking queries to an oracle. We prove that current relational learning
algorithms are generally not schema independent. For query-based learning
algorithms we show that the (de) composition transformations influence their
query complexity. We propose Castor, a sample-based relational learning
algorithm that achieves schema independence by leveraging data dependencies. We
support the theoretical results with an empirical study that demonstrates the
schema dependence/independence of several algorithms on existing benchmark and
real-world datasets under (de) compositions
TEMPOS: A Platform for Developing Temporal Applications on Top of Object DBMS
This paper presents TEMPOS: a set of models and languages supporting the manipulation of temporal data on top of object DBMS. The proposed models exploit object-oriented technology to meet some important, yet traditionally neglected design criteria related to legacy code migration and representation independence. Two complementary ways for accessing temporal data are offered: a query language and a visual browser. The query language, namely TempOQL, is an extension of OQL supporting the manipulation of histories regardless of their representations, through fully composable functional operators. The visual browser offers operators that facilitate several time-related interactive navigation tasks, such as studying a snapshot of a collection of objects at a given instant, or detecting and examining changes within temporal attributes and relationships. TEMPOS models and languages have been formalized both at the syntactical and the semantical level and have been implemented on top of an object DBMS. The suitability of the proposals with regard to applications' requirements has been validated through concrete case studies
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