14 research outputs found
The equational theory of the natural join and inner union is decidable
The natural join and the inner union operations combine relations of a
database. Tropashko and Spight [24] realized that these two operations are the
meet and join operations in a class of lattices, known by now as the relational
lattices. They proposed then lattice theory as an algebraic approach to the
theory of databases, alternative to the relational algebra. Previous works [17,
22] proved that the quasiequational theory of these lattices-that is, the set
of definite Horn sentences valid in all the relational lattices-is undecidable,
even when the signature is restricted to the pure lattice signature. We prove
here that the equational theory of relational lattices is decidable. That, is
we provide an algorithm to decide if two lattice theoretic terms t, s are made
equal under all intepretations in some relational lattice. We achieve this goal
by showing that if an inclusion t s fails in any of these lattices, then
it fails in a relational lattice whose size is bound by a triple exponential
function of the sizes of t and s.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1607.0298
Decision problems concerning sets of equations
This thesis is about "decision problems concerning properties of sets of equations". If L is a first-order language with equality and if P is a property of sets of L-equations, then "the decision problem of P in L" is the problem of the existence or not of an algorithm, which enables us to decide whether, given a set Sigma of L-equations, Sigma has the property P or not. If such an algorithm exists, P is decidable in L. Otherwise, it is undecidable in L. After surveying the work that has been done in the field, we present a new method for proving the undecidability of a property P, for finite sets of L-equations. As an application, we establish the undecidability of some basic model-theoretical properties, for finite sets of equations of non-trivial languages. Then, we prove the non-existence of an algorithm for deciding whether a field is finite and, as a corollary, we derive the undecidability of certain properties, for recursive sets of equations of infinite non-trivial languages. Finally, we consider trivial languages, and we prove that a number of properties, undecidable in languages with higher complexity, are decidable in them.<p
Relational lattices: from databases to Universal Algebra
Relational lattices are obtained by interpreting lattice connectives as natural join and inner union between database relations. Our study of their equational theory reveals that the variety generated by relational lattices has not been discussed in the existing literature. Furthermore, we show that addition of just the header constant to the lattice signature leads to undecidability of the quasiequational theory. Nevertheless, we also demonstrate that relational lattices are not as intangible as one may fear: for example, they do form a pseudoelementary class. We also apply the tools of Formal Concept Analysis and investigate the structure of relational lattices via their standard contexts. Furthermore, we show that the addition of typing rules and singleton constants allows a direct comparison with the monotonic relational expressions of Sagiv and Yannakakis