On the completeness of object-creating database transformation languages

Bussche, Jan Van den; Gucht, Dirk Van; Andries, Marc; Gyssens, Marc

doi:10.1145/256303.256311

Cited by 28 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(35 reference statements)

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“…One can extend the notion of generic query and update, however, to allow for value invention: the introduction of new data elements in the result [5,3,31,2].…”

Section: Value Inventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the expressive power of update primitives

Ameloot

Bussche

Waller

2013

Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems

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The SQL standard offers three primitive operations (insert, delete, and update which is here called modify) to update a relation based on a generic query. This paper compares the expressiveness of programs composed of these three operations, with the general notion of update that simply replaces the content of the relation by the result of a query. It turns out that replacing cannot be expressed in terms of insertions, deletions, and modifications, and neither can modifications be expressed in terms of insertions and deletions. The expressive power gained by if-then-else control flow in programs is investigated as well. Different ways to perform replacing are discussed: using a temporary variable; using the new SQL merge operation; using SQL's data change delta tables; or using queries involving object creation or arithmetic. Finally the paper investigates the power of alternating the different primitives. For example, an insertion followed by a modification cannot always be expressed as a modification followed by an insertion.

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“…One can extend the notion of generic query and update, however, to allow for value invention: the introduction of new data elements in the result [5,3,31,2].…”

Section: Value Inventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the expressive power of update primitives

Ameloot

Bussche

Waller

2013

Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems

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“…We collaborated on that question and that led to our joint paper (with Andreas Blass) on ASMs and computationally complete query languages [6,7]. In short, it turns out that choiceless polynomial time is the same as the polynomial-time fragment of a natural complete query language based on first-order logic, object creation [10], and iteration. We also showed that the "non-flat" character of choiceless polynomial time, be it through arbitrarily deeply nested sets, or through object creation, is essential to its high expressive power.…”

Section: Choiceless Polynomial Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Database Theory, Yuri, and Me

Bussche

2010

Fields of Logic and Computation

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Abstract. Yuri Gurevich made many varied and deep contributions to logic for computer science. Logic provides also the theoretical foundation of database systems. Hence, it is almost unavoidable that Gurevich made some great contributions to database theory. We discuss some of these contributions, and, along the way, present some personal anecdotes connected to Yuri and the author. We also describe the honorary doctorate awarded to Gurevich by Hasselt University (then called Limburgs Universitair Centrum) in 1998.Dedicated to Yuri Gurevich, the "man with a plan", on his 70th birthday. Database TheoryThe theory of database systems is a very broad field of theoretical computer science, concerned with the theoretical design and analysis of all data management aspects of computer science. One can get a good idea of the current research in this field by looking at the proceedings of the two main conferences in the area: the International Conference on Database Theory, and the ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems. As data management research in general follows the rapid changes in computing and software technology, database theory can appear quite trendy to the outsider. Nevertheless there are also timeless topics such as the theory of database queries, to which Yuri Gurevich has made a number of fundamental contributions.An in-depth treatment of database theory until the early 1990s can be found in the book of Abiteboul, Hull and Vianu [1]; Yuri Gurevich appears nine times in the bibliography.A relational database schema is a finite relational vocabulary, i.e., a finite set of relation names with associated arities. Instead of numbering the columns of a relation with numbers, as usual in mathematical logic, in database theory it is also customary to name the columns with attributes. In that case the arity is replaced by a finite set of attributes (called a relation scheme). A database instance over some schema is a finite relational structure over that schema, i.e., an assignment of a concrete, finite, relation content to each of the relation names. So, if R is a relation name of arity k and D is a database, then D(R) is a finite subset of U k , where U is some universe of data elements. The idea is that the contents of a database can be updated frequently, hence the term "instance". We will often drop this term, however, and simply talk about a "database".

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“…However, motivated by recent applications of databases in object-oriented environments, the theory of database queries has recently been extended beyond domain-preserving functions, allowing for the introduction of new domain elements in the result of a query [1], [16]. This extended theory, needed to account for the creation of new objects in an object-oriented database, is fully applicable to the particular case of graphs.…”

Section: Generic Completenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A powerful language for expressing object-creating queries is the language provided by the GOOD model, a graph-oriented model for object databases [11]. It has been shown that the GOOD language is computationally complete in that the language can express precisely all constructive computable generic graph functions [15], [16].…”

Section: Generic Completenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The interest in this result is that GOOD and DMS are not just arbitrarily chosen languages. Indeed, GOOD is a yardstick for the computational completeness of formalisms for computing generic graph functions: GOOD programs are known to be able to compute precisely all "constructive" generic graph functions [16]. Moreover, DMS is a yardstick for the complexity of such generic computations: it was designed to capture precisely the generic complexity classes introduced by Abiteboul and Vianu [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Expressiveness and Complexity of Generic Graph Machines

Gemis¹,

Paredaens²,

Peelman³

et al. 1998

Theory of Computing Systems

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Abstract. The Generic Graph Machine (GGM) model is a Turing machine-like model for expressing generic computations working directly on graph structures. In this paper we present a number of observations concerning the expressiveness and complexity of GGMs. Our results comprise the following: (i) an intrinsic characterization of the pairs of graphs that are an input-output pair of some GGM; (ii) a comparison between GGM complexity and TM complexity; and (iii) a detailed discussion on the connections between the GGM model and other generic computation models considered in the literature, in particular the generic complexity classes of Abiteboul and Vianu, and the Database Method Schemes of Denninghoff and Vianu.

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On the completeness of object-creating database transformation languages

Cited by 28 publications

References 22 publications

On the expressive power of update primitives

On the expressive power of update primitives

Database Theory, Yuri, and Me

Expressiveness and Complexity of Generic Graph Machines

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