Fundamentals and applications of order dependencies

Business-intelligence queries often involve SQL functions and algebraic expressions. There can be clear semantic relationships between a column's values and the values of a function over that column. A common property is monotonicity: as the column's values ascend, so do the function's values (or the other column's values). This we call an order dependency (OD). Queries can be evaluated more efficiently when the query optimizer uses order dependencies. They can be run even faster when the optimizer can also reason over known ODs to infer new ones. Order dependencies can be declared as integrity constraints, and they can be detected automatically for many types of SQL functions and algebraic expressions. We present optimization techniques using ODs for queries that involve join, order by, group by, partition by, and distinct. Essentially, ODs can further exploit interesting orders to eliminate or simplify potentially expensive sorts in the query plan. We evaluate these techniques over our prototype implementation in IBM® DB2® using the TPC-DS® benchmark schema and some customer inspired queries. Our experimental results demonstrate a significant performance gain. Dependencies have played an important role in database theory. We study the theoretical aspects of order dependencies-and unidirectional order dependencies (UODs), a proper sub-class of ODs-which describe the relationships among lexicographical orderings of sets of tuples. We investigate the inference problem for order dependencies. We establish the following: (i) a sound and complete axiomatization for UODs which is sound for ODs; (ii) a hierarchy of order dependency classes; (iii) a proof of co-NP-completeness of the inference problem for ODs and for the subclass of UODs; (iv) a proof of co-NP-completeness of the inference problem of functional dependencies (FDs) from ODs in general, but demonstrate linear time complexity for the inference of FDs from UODs; (v) a sound and complete elimination procedure for testing logical implication over ODs; and (vi) a sound and complete polynomial inference algorithm for sets of UODs over natural domains

On Variants of Dependence Logic : Axiomatizability and Expressiveness

Dependence logic is a novel logical formalism that has connections to database theory, statistics, linguistics, social choice theory, and physics. Its aim is to provide a systematic and mathematically rigorous tool for studying notions of dependence and independence in different areas. Recently many variants of dependence logic have been studied in the contexts of first-order, modal, and propositional logic. In this thesis we examine independence and inclusion logic that are variants of dependence logic extending first-order logic with so-called independence or inclusion atoms, respectively. The work consists of two parts in which we study either axiomatizability or expressivity hierarchies regarding these logics. In the first part we examine whether there exist some natural parameters of independence and inclusion logic that give rise to infinite expressivity or complexity hierarchies. Two main parameters are considered. These are arity of a dependency atom and number of universal quantifiers. We show that for both logics, the notion of arity gives rise to strict expressivity hierarchies. With respect to number of universal quantifiers however, strictness or collapse of the corresponding hierarchies turns out to be relative to the choice of semantics. In the second part we turn attention to axiomatizations. Due to their complexity, dependence and independence logic cannot have a complete recursively enumerable axiomatization. Hence, restricting attention to partial solutions, we first axiomatize all first-order consequences of independence logic sentences, thus extending an analogous result for dependence logic. We also consider the class of independence and inclusion atoms, and show that it can be axiomatized using implicit existential quantification. For relational databases this implies a sound and complete axiomatization of embedded multivalued and inclusion dependencies taken together. Lastly, we consider keys together with so-called pure independence atoms and prove both positive and negative results regarding their finite axiomatizability.Riippuvuuslogiikka on formalismi, joka tutkii muodollisen logiikan viitekehyksessä riippuvuuden ja riippumattomuuden käsitteitä. Koska nämä käsitteet ilmenevät myös monilla muilla eri tieteenaloilla, riippuvuuslogiikan tutkimus kytkeytyy muun muassa tietokantateoriaan, tilastotieteeseen, kielitieteeseen, sosiaalisen valinnan teoriaan ja fysiikkaan. Ideana riippuvuuslogiikassa on laajentaa tunnettuja muodollisen logiikan kieliä erilaisilla riippuvuuden käsitteillä. Propositio-, modaali- ja predikaattilogiikoille voidaan kaikille määritellä laajennoksia, joissa riippuvuuksia ilmaistaan uusien atomikaavojen avulla. Tämä väitöskirja tarkastelee kahta tällaista ensimmäisen kertaluvun predikaattilogiikan laajennosta. Toisessa uudet atomikaavat kuvaavat riippumattomuuden, ja toisessa sisältyvyyden käsitteitä. Saatuja laajennoksia kutsutaan riippumattomuuslogiikaksi ja inkluusiologiikaksi. Tutkielma jakautuu kahteen osaan. Ensimmäisessä osassa tarkastellaan edellä mainittujen logiikoiden ilmaisuvoimaan ja laskennalliseen vaativuuteen liittyviä hierarkioita. Kyseiset hierarkiat saadaan rajoittamalla joko uusien atomikaavojen kokoa tai universaalikvanttorien lukumäärää. Toisessa osassa tutkitaan riippumattomuus- ja inkluusiologiikan muodollista päättelyä. Tarkastelun kohteena on muodollisen päättelyn kehittäminen riippumattomuuslogiikan ensimmäisen kertaluvun seurauksille sekä erilaisille kokoelmille uusia atomikaavoja. Jälkimmäiseen tapaukseen kehitetty muodollisen päättelyn teoria soveltuu erityisesti relationaalisten tietokantojen riippuvuuskäsitteiden implikaatio-ongelmiin

Relaxed Functional Dependencies - A Survey of Approaches

Recently, there has been a renovated interest in functional dependencies due to the possibility of employing them in several advanced database operations, such as data cleaning, query relaxation, record matching, and so forth. In particular, the constraints defined for canonical functional dependencies have been relaxed to capture inconsistencies in real data, patterns of semantically related data, or semantic relationships in complex data types. In this paper, we have surveyed 35 of such functional dependencies, providing a classification criteria, motivating examples, and a systematic analysis of them

Characterization of XML Functional Dependencies and their Interaction with DTDs

With the rise of XML as a standard model of data exchange, XML functional dependencies (XFDs) have become important to areas such as key analysis, document normalization, and data integrity. XFDs are more complicated than relational functional dependencies because the set of XFDs satisfied by an XML document depends not only on the document values, but also the tree structure and corresponding DTD. In particular, constraints imposed by DTDs may alter the implications from a base set of XFDs, and may even be inconsistent with a set of XFDs. In this paper we examine the interaction between XFDs and DTDs. We present a sound and complete axiomatization for XFDs, both alone and in the presence of certain classes of DTDs. We show that these DTD classes form an axiomatic hierarchy, with the axioms at each level a proper superset of the previous. Furthermore, we show that consistency checking with respect to a set of XFDs is feasible for these same classes