Querying Schemas With Access Restrictions

We study verification of systems whose transitions consist of accesses to a Web-based data-source. An access is a lookup on a relation within a relational database, fixing values for a set of positions in the relation. For example, a transition can represent access to a Web form, where the user is restricted to filling in values for a particular set of fields. We look at verifying properties of a schema describing the possible accesses of such a system. We present a language where one can describe the properties of an access path, and also specify additional restrictions on accesses that are enforced by the schema. Our main property language, AccLTL, is based on a first-order extension of linear-time temporal logic, interpreting access paths as sequences of relational structures. We also present a lower-level automaton model, Aautomata, which AccLTL specifications can compile into. We show that AccLTL and A-automata can express static analysis problems related to "querying with limited access patterns" that have been studied in the database literature in the past, such as whether an access is relevant to answering a query, and whether two queries are equivalent in the accessible data they can return. We prove decidability and complexity results for several restrictions and variants of AccLTL, and explain which properties of paths can be expressed in each restriction.Comment: VLDB201

Query Stability in Monotonic Data-Aware Business Processes [Extended Version]

Organizations continuously accumulate data, often according to some business processes. If one poses a query over such data for decision support, it is important to know whether the query is stable, that is, whether the answers will stay the same or may change in the future because business processes may add further data. We investigate query stability for conjunctive queries. To this end, we define a formalism that combines an explicit representation of the control flow of a process with a specification of how data is read and inserted into the database. We consider different restrictions of the process model and the state of the system, such as negation in conditions, cyclic executions, read access to written data, presence of pending process instances, and the possibility to start fresh process instances. We identify for which facet combinations stability of conjunctive queries is decidable and provide encodings into variants of Datalog that are optimal with respect to the worst-case complexity of the problem.Comment: This report is the extended version of a paper accepted at the 19th International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT 2016), March 15-18, 2016 - Bordeaux, Franc

State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity

This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages to be carried out within the Rewerse project. From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs; in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks

Multioperator Weighted Monadic Datalog

In this thesis we will introduce multioperator weighted monadic datalog (mwmd), a formal model for specifying tree series, tree transformations, and tree languages. This model combines aspects of multioperator weighted tree automata (wmta), weighted monadic datalog (wmd), and monadic datalog tree transducers (mdtt). In order to develop a rich theory we will define multiple versions of semantics for mwmd and compare their expressiveness. We will study normal forms and decidability results of mwmd and show (by employing particular semantic domains) that the theory of mwmd subsumes the theory of both wmd and mdtt. We conclude this thesis by showing that mwmd even contain wmta as a syntactic subclass and present results concerning this subclass

State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity

This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages to be carried out within the Rewerse project. From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs; in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks

Complexity and composition of synthesized web services

The paper investigates fundamental decision problems and composition synthesis for Web services commonly found in practice. We propose a notion of synthesized Web services (SWS’s) to specify the behaviors of the services. Upon receiving a sequence of input messages, an SWS issues multiple queries to a database and generates actions, in parallel; it produces external messages and database updates by synthesizing the actions parallelly generated. In contrast to previous models for Web services, SWS’s advocate parallel processing and (deterministic) synthesis of actions. We classify SWS’s based on what queries an SWS can issue, how the synthesis of actions is expressed, and whether unbounded input sequences are allowed in a single interaction session. We show that the behaviors of Web services supported by various prior models, data-driven or not, can be specified by different SWS classes. For each of these classes we study the non-emptiness, validation and equivalence problems, and establish matching upper and lower bounds on these problems. We also provide complexity bounds on composition synthesis for these SWS classes, identifying decidable cases

Expressiveness and complexity of xml publishing transducers

A number of languages have been developed for specifying XML publishing, i.e., transformations of relational data into XML trees. These languages generally describe the behaviors of a middleware controller that builds an output tree iteratively, issuing queries to a relational source and expanding the tree with the query results at each step. To study the complexity and expressive power of XML publishing languages, this paper proposes a notion of pub-lishing transducers. Unlike automata for querying XML data, a publishing transducer generates a new XML tree rather than per-forming a query on an existing tree. We study a variety of pub-lishing transducers based on what relational queries a transducer can issue, what temporary stores a transducer can use during tree generation, and whether or not some tree nodes are allowed to be virtual, i.e., excluded from the output tree. We first show how exist-ing XML publishing languages can be characterized by such trans-ducers. We then study the membership, emptiness and equivalence problems for various classes of transducers and existing publish-ing languages. We establish lower and upper bounds, all matching except one, ranging from PTIME to undecidable. Finally, we inves-tigate the expressive power of these transducers and existing lan-guages. We show that when treated as relational query languages, different classes of transducers capture either complexity classes (e.g., PSPACE) or fragments of datalog (e.g., linear datalog). For tree generation, we establish connections between publishing trans-ducers and logical transductions