581 research outputs found
The tractability frontier of graph-like first-order query sets
We study first-order model checking, by which we refer to the problem of deciding whether or not a given first-order sentence is satisfied by a given finite structure. In particular, we aim to understand on which sets of sentences this problem is tractable, in the sense of parameterized complexity theory. To this end, we define the notion of a graph-like sentence set, which definition is inspired by previous work on first-order model checking wherein the permitted connectives and quantifiers were restricted. Our main theorem is the complete tractability classification of such graphlike sentence sets, which is (to our knowledge) the first complexity classification theorem concerning a class of sentences that has no restriction on the connectives and quantifiers. To present and prove our classification, we introduce and develop a novel complexity-theoretic framework which is built on parameterized complexity and includes new notions of reduction
Evaluating Datalog via Tree Automata and Cycluits
We investigate parameterizations of both database instances and queries that
make query evaluation fixed-parameter tractable in combined complexity. We show
that clique-frontier-guarded Datalog with stratified negation (CFG-Datalog)
enjoys bilinear-time evaluation on structures of bounded treewidth for programs
of bounded rule size. Such programs capture in particular conjunctive queries
with simplicial decompositions of bounded width, guarded negation fragment
queries of bounded CQ-rank, or two-way regular path queries. Our result is
shown by translating to alternating two-way automata, whose semantics is
defined via cyclic provenance circuits (cycluits) that can be tractably
evaluated.Comment: 56 pages, 63 references. Journal version of "Combined Tractability of
Query Evaluation via Tree Automata and Cycluits (Extended Version)" at
arXiv:1612.04203. Up to the stylesheet, page/environment numbering, and
possible minor publisher-induced changes, this is the exact content of the
journal paper that will appear in Theory of Computing Systems. Update wrt
version 1: latest reviewer feedbac
Characterizing Tractability of Simple Well-Designed Pattern Trees with Projection
We study the complexity of evaluating well-designed pattern trees, a query language extending conjunctive queries with the possibility to define parts of the query to be optional. This possibility of optional parts is important for obtaining meaningful results over incomplete data sources as it is common in semantic web settings.
Recently, a structural characterization of the classes of well-designed pattern trees that can be evaluated in polynomial time was shown. However, projection - a central feature of many query languages - was not considered in this study. We work towards closing this gap by giving a characterization of all tractable classes of simple well-designed pattern trees with projection (under some common complexity theoretic assumptions). Since well-designed pattern trees correspond to the fragment of well-designed {AND, OPTIONAL}-SPARQL queries this gives a complete description of the tractable classes of queries with projections in this fragment that can be characterized by the underlying graph structures of the queries
Counting Answers to Existential Positive Queries: A Complexity Classification
Existential positive formulas form a fragment of first-order logic that
includes and is semantically equivalent to unions of conjunctive queries, one
of the most important and well-studied classes of queries in database theory.
We consider the complexity of counting the number of answers to existential
positive formulas on finite structures and give a trichotomy theorem on query
classes, in the setting of bounded arity. This theorem generalizes and unifies
several known results on the complexity of conjunctive queries and unions of
conjunctive queries.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1501.0719
Tree-like Queries in OWL 2 QL: Succinctness and Complexity Results
This paper investigates the impact of query topology on the difficulty of
answering conjunctive queries in the presence of OWL 2 QL ontologies. Our first
contribution is to clarify the worst-case size of positive existential (PE),
non-recursive Datalog (NDL), and first-order (FO) rewritings for various
classes of tree-like conjunctive queries, ranging from linear queries to
bounded treewidth queries. Perhaps our most surprising result is a
superpolynomial lower bound on the size of PE-rewritings that holds already for
linear queries and ontologies of depth 2. More positively, we show that
polynomial-size NDL-rewritings always exist for tree-shaped queries with a
bounded number of leaves (and arbitrary ontologies), and for bounded treewidth
queries paired with bounded depth ontologies. For FO-rewritings, we equate the
existence of polysize rewritings with well-known problems in Boolean circuit
complexity. As our second contribution, we analyze the computational complexity
of query answering and establish tractability results (either NL- or
LOGCFL-completeness) for a range of query-ontology pairs. Combining our new
results with those from the literature yields a complete picture of the
succinctness and complexity landscapes for the considered classes of queries
and ontologies.Comment: This is an extended version of a paper accepted at LICS'15. It
contains both succinctness and complexity results and adopts FOL notation.
The appendix contains proofs that had to be omitted from the conference
version for lack of space. The previous arxiv version (a long version of our
DL'14 workshop paper) only contained the succinctness results and used
description logic notatio
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