Computable queries for relational data bases

Abstract

AbstractThe concept of “reasonable” queries on relational data bases is investigated. We provide an abstract characterization of the class of queries which are computable, and define the completeness of a query language as the property of being precisely powerful enough to express the queries in this class. This definition is then compared with other proposals for measuring the power of query languages. Our main result is the completeness of a simple programming language which can be thought of as consisting of the relational algebra augmented with the power of iteration