Reflective Relational Machines

AbstractWe propose a model of database programming withreflection(dynamic generation of queries within the host programming language), called thereflective relational machine, and characterize the power of this machine in terms of known complexity classes. In particular, the polynomial time restriction of the reflective relational machine is shown to express PSPACE, and to correspond precisely to uniform circuits of polynomial depth and exponential size. This provides an alternative, logic based formulation of the uniform circuit model, which may be more convenient for problems naturally formulated in logic terms, and establishes that reflection allows for more “intense” parallelism, which is not attainable otherwise (unless P=PSPACE). We also explore the power of the reflective relational machine subject to restrictions on the number of variables used, emphasizing the case of sublinear bounds

Datalog extensions for database queries and updates

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Topological Queries in Spatial Databases

We study topological queries over two-dimensional spatial databases. First, we show that the topological properties of semi-algebraic spatial regions can be completely specified using a classical finite structure, essentially the embedded planar graph of the region boundaries. This provides an invariant characterizing semi-algebraic regions up to homeomorphism. All topological queries on semi-algebraic regions can be answered by queries on the invariant whose complexity is polynomially related to the original. Also, we show that for the purpose of answering topological queries, semi-algebraic regions can always be represented simply as polygonal regions. We then study query languages for topological properties of two-dimensional spatial databases, starting from the topological relationships between pairs of planar regions introduced by Egenhofer. We show that the closure of these relationships under appropriate logical operators yields languages which are complete for topological prope..

Views and queries: Determinacy and rewriting

We investigate the question of whether a query Q can be answered using a set V of views. We first define the problem in information-theoretic terms: we say that V determines Q if V provides enough information to uniquely determine the answer to Q. Next, we look at the problem of rewriting Q in terms of V using a specific language. Given a view language V and query language Q, we say that a rewriting language R is complete for V-to-Q rewritings if every Q ∈ Q can be rewritten in terms of V∈ V using a query in R, whenever V determines Q. While query rewriting using views has been extensively investigated for some specific languages, the connection to the informationtheoretic notion of determinacy, and the question of completeness of a rewriting language have received little attention. In this article we investigate systematically the notion of determinacy and its connection to rewriting. The results concern decidability of determinacy for various view and query languages, as well as the power required of complete rewriting languages. We consider languages ranging from first-order to conjunctive queries

Views and queries: Determinacy and rewriting

We investigate the question of whether a query Q can be answered using a set V of views. We first define the problem in information-theoretic terms: we say that V determines Q if V provides enough information to uniquely determine the answer to Q. Next, we look at the problem of rewriting Q in terms of V using a specific language. Given a view language V and query language Q, we say that a rewriting language R is complete for V-to-Q rewritings if every Q ∈ Q can be rewritten in terms of V∈ V using a query in R, whenever V determines Q. While query rewriting using views has been extensively investigated for some specific languages, the connection to the informationtheoretic notion of determinacy, and the question of completeness of a rewriting language have received little attention. In this article we investigate systematically the notion of determinacy and its connection to rewriting. The results concern decidability of determinacy for various view and query languages, as well as the power required of complete rewriting languages. We consider languages ranging from first-order to conjunctive queries

The Power of Reflective Relational Machines

A model of database programming with reflection, called reflective relational machine, is introduced and studied. The reflection consists here of dynamic generation of queries in a host programming language. The main results characterize the power of the machine in terms of known complexity classes. In particular, the polynomial-time restriction of the machine is shown to express PSPACE, and to correspond precisely to uniform circuits of polynomial depth and exponential size. This provides an alternative, logic-based formulation of the uniform circuit model, more convenient for problems naturally formulated in logic terms. Since time in the polynomially-bounded machine coincides with time in the uniform circuit model, this also shows that reflection allows for more "intense" parallelism, which is not attainable otherwise (unless P = PSPACE). Other results concern the power of the reflective relational machine subject to restrictions on the number of variables used

Axiomatization of frequent sets

In data mining association rules are very popular. Most of the algorithms in the literature for finding association rules start by searching for frequent itemsets. The itemset mining algorithms typically interleave brute force counting of frequencies with a meta-phase for pruning parts of the search space. The knowledge acquired in the counting phases can be represented by frequent set expressions. A frequent set expression is a pair containing an itemset and a frequency indicating that the frequency of that itemset is greater than or equal to the given fre-quency. A system of frequent sets is a collection of such expressions. We give an axiomatization for these systems. This axiomatization characterizes complete systems. A system is complete when it explicitly contains all information that it logically implies. Every system of frequent sets has a unique completion. The completion of a system actually represents the knowledge that maximally can be derived in the meta-phase