254 research outputs found
Datalog and Constraint Satisfaction with Infinite Templates
On finite structures, there is a well-known connection between the expressive
power of Datalog, finite variable logics, the existential pebble game, and
bounded hypertree duality. We study this connection for infinite structures.
This has applications for constraint satisfaction with infinite templates. If
the template Gamma is omega-categorical, we present various equivalent
characterizations of those Gamma such that the constraint satisfaction problem
(CSP) for Gamma can be solved by a Datalog program. We also show that
CSP(Gamma) can be solved in polynomial time for arbitrary omega-categorical
structures Gamma if the input is restricted to instances of bounded treewidth.
Finally, we characterize those omega-categorical templates whose CSP has
Datalog width 1, and those whose CSP has strict Datalog width k.Comment: 28 pages. This is an extended long version of a conference paper that
appeared at STACS'06. In the third version in the arxiv we have revised the
presentation again and added a section that relates our results to
formalizations of CSPs using relation algebra
The Complexity of Rooted Phylogeny Problems
Several computational problems in phylogenetic reconstruction can be
formulated as restrictions of the following general problem: given a formula in
conjunctive normal form where the literals are rooted triples, is there a
rooted binary tree that satisfies the formula? If the formulas do not contain
disjunctions, the problem becomes the famous rooted triple consistency problem,
which can be solved in polynomial time by an algorithm of Aho, Sagiv,
Szymanski, and Ullman. If the clauses in the formulas are restricted to
disjunctions of negated triples, Ng, Steel, and Wormald showed that the problem
remains NP-complete. We systematically study the computational complexity of
the problem for all such restrictions of the clauses in the input formula. For
certain restricted disjunctions of triples we present an algorithm that has
sub-quadratic running time and is asymptotically as fast as the fastest known
algorithm for the rooted triple consistency problem. We also show that any
restriction of the general rooted phylogeny problem that does not fall into our
tractable class is NP-complete, using known results about the complexity of
Boolean constraint satisfaction problems. Finally, we present a pebble game
argument that shows that the rooted triple consistency problem (and also all
generalizations studied in this paper) cannot be solved by Datalog
Rewritability in Monadic Disjunctive Datalog, MMSNP, and Expressive Description Logics
We study rewritability of monadic disjunctive Datalog programs, (the
complements of) MMSNP sentences, and ontology-mediated queries (OMQs) based on
expressive description logics of the ALC family and on conjunctive queries. We
show that rewritability into FO and into monadic Datalog (MDLog) are decidable,
and that rewritability into Datalog is decidable when the original query
satisfies a certain condition related to equality. We establish
2NExpTime-completeness for all studied problems except rewritability into MDLog
for which there remains a gap between 2NExpTime and 3ExpTime. We also analyze
the shape of rewritings, which in the MMSNP case correspond to obstructions,
and give a new construction of canonical Datalog programs that is more
elementary than existing ones and also applies to formulas with free variables
The Complexity of Datalog on Linear Orders
We study the program complexity of datalog on both finite and infinite linear
orders. Our main result states that on all linear orders with at least two
elements, the nonemptiness problem for datalog is EXPTIME-complete. While
containment of the nonemptiness problem in EXPTIME is known for finite linear
orders and actually for arbitrary finite structures, it is not obvious for
infinite linear orders. It sharply contrasts the situation on other infinite
structures; for example, the datalog nonemptiness problem on an infinite
successor structure is undecidable. We extend our upper bound results to
infinite linear orders with constants.
As an application, we show that the datalog nonemptiness problem on Allen's
interval algebra is EXPTIME-complete.Comment: 21 page
Cores of Countably Categorical Structures
A relational structure is a core, if all its endomorphisms are embeddings.
This notion is important for computational complexity classification of
constraint satisfaction problems. It is a fundamental fact that every finite
structure has a core, i.e., has an endomorphism such that the structure induced
by its image is a core; moreover, the core is unique up to isomorphism. Weprove
that every \omega -categorical structure has a core. Moreover, every
\omega-categorical structure is homomorphically equivalent to a model-complete
core, which is unique up to isomorphism, and which is finite or \omega
-categorical. We discuss consequences for constraint satisfaction with \omega
-categorical templates
Local consistency as a reduction between constraint satisfaction problems
We study the use of local consistency methods as reductions between constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), and promise version thereof, with the aim to classify these reductions in a similar way as the algebraic approach classifies gadget reductions between CSPs. This research is motivated by the requirement of more expressive reductions in the scope of promise CSPs. While gadget reductions are enough to provide all necessary hardness in the scope of (finite domain) non-promise CSP, in promise CSPs a wider class of reductions needs to be used.We provide a general framework of reductions, which we call consistency reductions, that covers most (if not all) reductions recently used for proving NP-hardness of promise CSPs. We prove some basic properties of these reductions, and provide the first steps towards understanding the power of consistency reductions by characterizing a fragment associated to arc-consistency in terms of polymorphisms of the template. In addition to showing hardness, consistency reductions can also be used to provide feasible algorithms by reducing to a fixed tractable (promise) CSP, for example, to solving systems of affine equations. In this direction, among other results, we describe the well-known Sherali-Adams hierarchy for CSP in terms of a consistency reduction to linear programming
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