Regular expressions for data words

In this paper we define and study regular expressions for data words. We first define regular expression with memory (REM), which extend standard regular ex-pressions with limited memory and show that they capture the class of data words defined by register automata. We also study the complexity of the standard deci-sion problems for REM, which turn out to be the same as for register automata. In order to lower the complexity of main reasoning tasks, we then look at two natural subclasses of REM that can define many properties of interest in the applications of data words: regular expression with binding (REWB) and regular expression with equality (REWE). We study their expressive power and analyse the com-plexity of their standard decision problems. We also establish the following strict hierarchy of expressive power: REM is strictly stronger than REWB, and in turn REWB is strictly stronger than REWE

Regular Expressions for Data Words

Abstract. In data words, each position carries not only a letter form a finite alphabet, as the usual words do, but also a data value coming from an infinite domain. There has been a renewed interest in them due to applications in querying and reasoning about data models with complex structural properties, notably XML, and more recently, graph databases. Logical formalisms designed for querying such data often require concise and easily understandable presentations of regular languages over data words. Our goal, therefore, is to define and study regular expressions for data words. As the automaton model, we take register automata, which are a natural analog of NFAs for data words. We first equip standard regular expressions with limited memory, and show that they capture the class of data words defined by register automata. The complexity of the main decision problems for these expressions (nonemptiness, membership) also turns out to be the same as for register automata. We then look at a subclass of these regular expressions that can define many properties of interest in applications of data words, and show that the main decision problems can be solved efficiently for it.

Regular Expressions with Binding over Data Words for Querying Graph Databases

Abstract. Data words assign to each position a letter from a finite alphabet and a data value from an infinite set. Introduced as an abstraction of paths in XML documents, they recently found applications in querying graph databases as well. Those are actively studied due to applications in such diverse areas as social networks, semantic web, and biological databases. Querying formalisms for graph databases are based on specifying paths conforming to some regular conditions, which led to astudyofregularexpressionsfordatawords. Previously studied regular expressions for data words were either rather limited, or had the full expressiveness of register automata, at the expense of a quite unnatural and unintuitive binding mechanism for data values. Our goal is to introduce a natural extension of regular expressions with proper bindings for data values, similar to the notion of freeze quantifiers used in connection with temporal logics over data words, and to study both language-theoretic properties of the resulting class of languages of data words, and their applications in querying graph databases.

Parikh Images of Register Automata

As it has been recently shown, Parikh images of languages of nondeterministic one-register automata are rational (but not semilinear in general), but it is still open if the property extends to all register automata. We identify a subclass of nondeterministic register automata, called hierarchical register automata (HRA), with the following two properties: every rational language is recognised by a HRA; and Parikh image of the language of every HRA is rational. In consequence, these two properties make HRA an automata-theoretic characterisation of languages of nondeterministic register automata with rational Parikh images

Expressive Path Queries on Graph with Data

Graph data models have recently become popular owing to their applications, e.g., in social networks and the semantic web. Typical navigational query languages over graph databases - such as Conjunctive Regular Path Queries (CRPQs) - cannot express relevant properties of the interaction between the underlying data and the topology. Two languages have been recently proposed to overcome this problem: walk logic (WL) and regular expressions with memory (REM). In this paper, we begin by investigating fundamental properties of WL and REM, i.e., complexity of evaluation problems and expressive power. We first show that the data complexity of WL is nonelementary, which rules out its practicality. On the other hand, while REM has low data complexity, we point out that many natural data/topology properties of graphs expressible in WL cannot be expressed in REM. To this end, we propose register logic, an extension of REM, which we show to be able to express many natural graph properties expressible in WL, while at the same time preserving the elementariness of data complexity of REMs. It is also incomparable to WL in terms of expressive power.Comment: 39 page

Generalized Data Automata and Fixpoint Logic

Data ω-words are ω-words where each position is additionally labelled by a data value from an infinite alphabet. They can be seen as graphs equipped with two sorts of edges: ‘next position’ and ‘next position with the same data value’. Based on this view, an extension of Data Automata called Generalized Data Automata (GDA) is introduced. While the decidability of emptiness of GDA is open, the decidability for a subclass class called Büchi GDA is shown using Multicounter Automata. Next a natural fixpoint logic is defined on the graphs of data ω-words and it is shown that the µ-fragment as well as the alternation-free fragment is undecidable. But the fragment which is defined by limiting the number of alternations between future and past formulas is shown to be decidable, by first converting the formulas to equivalent alternating Büchi automata and then to Büchi GDA