162 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
Similarity and bisimilarity notions appropriate for characterizing indistinguishability in fragments of the calculus of relations
Motivated by applications in databases, this paper considers various
fragments of the calculus of binary relations. The fragments are obtained by
leaving out, or keeping in, some of the standard operators, along with some
derived operators such as set difference, projection, coprojection, and
residuation. For each considered fragment, a characterization is obtained for
when two given binary relational structures are indistinguishable by
expressions in that fragment. The characterizations are based on appropriately
adapted notions of simulation and bisimulation.Comment: 36 pages, Journal of Logic and Computation 201
An infinite hierarchy in a class of polynomial-time program schemes
We define a class of program schemes RFDPS constructed around notions of forall-loops, repeat-loops, arrays and if-then-else instructions, and which take finite structures as inputs, and we examine the class of problems, denoted RFDPS also, accepted by such program schemes. The class of program schemes RFDPS is a logic, in Gurevich's sense, in that: every program scheme accepts an isomorphism-closed class of finite structures; we can recursively check whether a given finite structure is accepted by a given program scheme; and we can recursively enumerate the program schemes of RFDPS. We show that the class of problems RFDPS properly contains the class of problems definable in inductive fixed-point logic (for example, the well-known problem Parity is in RFDPS) and that there is a strict, infinite hierarchy of classes of problems within RFDPS (the union of which is RFDPS) parameterized by the depth of nesting of forall-loops in our program schemes. This is the first strict, infinite hierarchy in any polynomial-time logic properly extending inductive fixed-point logic (with the property that the union of the classes in the hierarchy consists of all problems definable in the logic). The fact that there are problems (like Parity) in RFDPS which cannot be defined in many of the more traditional logics of finite model theory (which often have zero-one laws) essentially means that existing tools, techniques and logical hierarchy results are of limited use to us
Boolean Dependence Logic and Partially-Ordered Connectives
We introduce a new variant of dependence logic called Boolean dependence
logic. In Boolean dependence logic dependence atoms are of the type
=(x_1,...,x_n,\alpha), where \alpha is a Boolean variable. Intuitively, with
Boolean dependence atoms one can express quantification of relations, while
standard dependence atoms express quantification over functions.
We compare the expressive power of Boolean dependence logic to dependence
logic and first-order logic enriched by partially-ordered connectives. We show
that the expressive power of Boolean dependence logic and dependence logic
coincide. We define natural syntactic fragments of Boolean dependence logic and
show that they coincide with the corresponding fragments of first-order logic
enriched by partially-ordered connectives with respect to expressive power. We
then show that the fragments form a strict hierarchy.Comment: 41 page
Logical properties of random graphs from small addable classes
We establish zero-one laws and convergence laws for monadic second-order
logic (MSO) (and, a fortiori, first-order logic) on a number of interesting
graph classes. In particular, we show that MSO obeys a zero-one law on the
class of connected planar graphs, the class of connected graphs of tree-width
at most and the class of connected graphs excluding the -clique as a
minor. In each of these cases, dropping the connectivity requirement leads to a
class where the zero-one law fails but a convergence law for MSO still holds
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