In this paper we study the expressive power of query languages for nested bags. We define the ambient bag language by generalizing the constructs of the relational language of Breazu-Tannen, Buneman and Wong, which is known to have precisely the power of the nested relational algebra. Relative strength of additional polynomial constructs is studied, and the ambient language endowed with the strongest combination of those constructs is chosen as a candidate for the basic bag language, which is called BQL (Bag Query Language). We prove that achieveing the power of BQL in the relational language amounts to adding simple arithmetic to the latter. We show that BQL has shortcomings of the relational algebra: it can not express recursive queries. In particular, parity test is not definable in BQL. We consider augmenting BQL with powerbag and structural recursion to overcome this deficiency. In contrast to the relational case, where powerset and structural recursion are equivalent...

In order to find a static type system that adequately supports database languages, we need to express the most general type of a program that involves database operations. This can be achieved through an extension to the type system of ML that captures the polymorphic nature of field selection, together with a technique that generalizes relational operators to arbitrary data structures. The combination provides a statically typed language in which generalized relational databases may be cleanly represented as typed structures. As in ML types are inferred, which relieves the programmer of making the type assertions that may be required in a complex database environment. These extensions may also be used to provide static polymorphic typechecking in object-oriented languages and databases. A problem that arises with object-oriented databases is the apparent need for dynamic typechecking when dealing with queries on heterogeneous collections of objects. An extension of the type system needed for generalized relational operations can also be used for manipulating collections of dynamically typed values in a statically typed language. A prototype language based on these ideas has been implemented. While it lacks a proper treatment of persistent data, it demonstrates that a wide variety of database structures can be cleanly represented in a polymorphic programming language.

Or-sets were introduced by Imielinski, Naqvi and Vadaparty for dealing with limited forms of disjunctive information in database queries. Independently, Rounds used a similar notion for representing disjunctive and conjunctive information in the context of situation theory. In this paper we formulate a query language with adequate expressive power for or-sets. Using the notion of normalization of or-sets, queries at the "structural" and "conceptual" levels are distinguished. Losslessness of normalization is established for a large class of queries. We have obtained upper bounds for the cost of normalization. An approach related to that of Rounds is used to provide semantics for or-sets. We also treat or-sets in the context of partial information in databases.

Abstract not found

A new definition of complex objects is introduced which provides a denotation for incomplete tuples as well as partially described sets. Set values are "sandwiched" between "complete" and "consistent" descriptions (representing the Smyth and Hoare powerdomains respectively), allowing the maximal values to be arbitrary subsets of maximal elements in the domain of the set. We also examine the use of rules in defining queries over such objects. 1 Introduction A characteristic of "complex-object" [1, 2] databases and "higher-order" relations [3, 4] is that the components of tuples are not restricted to taking only atomic values, but may be other tuples or even sets of tuples. A second property of complex objects and related information structures is that there is a natural ordering on the domain of values with an associated algebra [5, 6, 7]. For example, in Bancilhon and Khoshafian's ordering on tuples [1] [Name) 0 J.Doe 0 ] v [Name) 0 J.Doe 0 ;Age)21] This research was suppor...

Method inheritance and data abstraction are central features of object-oriented programming that are attained through a hierarchical organization of classes. Recent studies have shown that method inheritance can be supported by an ML style type inference when extended to labeled records. This is based on the observation that a function that selects a field f of a record can be given a polymorphic type that enables it to be applied to any record which contains a field f. Several type systems also provide data abstraction through abstract type declarations. However, these two features have not yet been properly integrated in a statically checked polymorphic type system. This paper proposes a static type system that achieves this integration in an ML-like polymorphic language by adding a class construct which allows the programmer to build a hierarchy of classes connected by multiple inheritance declarations. Classes can be parameterized by types allowing “generic ” defi-nitions. The type correctness of class declarations is statically checked, and a principal scheme is inferred for any type correct program containing methods and objects defined in classes. Moreover, the type system can be extended to include the structures and operations needed for database programming and therefore can serve as a basis of an object-oriented database programming lan-guage. 1

The use of data at different levels of information con-tent is essential to the performance of multimedia, scientific, and other large databases because it can significantly decrease I/O and communication costs.

Query containment is the most fundamental relationship between a pair of database queries: a query Q is said to be contained in a query Q if the answer for Q is always a subset of the answer for Q , independent of the current state of the database. Query containment is an important problem in a wide variety of data management applications, including verification of integrity constraints, reasoning about contents of data sources in data integration, semantic caching, verification of knowledge bases, determining queries independent of updates, and most recently, in query reformulation for peer data management systems. Query containment has been studied extensively in the relational context and for XPath queries, but not for XML queries with nesting.

Abstract not found

Databases are often incomplete because of the presence of disjunctive information, due to conflicts, partial knowledge and other reasons. Queries against such databases often ask questions about various possibilities encoded by the stored data, rather than the stored data itself. Normalization, which is a mechanism for asking such queries, was presented in [LW93a]; however, it had exponential space complexity. The main goal of this paper is to develop a general theory of answering queries against incomplete databases with disjunctive information, and use it to design practical algorithms for query evaluation. We define the semantics of such databases and prove normalization theorems for set- and bag-based complex objects. These theorems provide us with programming primitives that one needs in order to obtain the list of all possibilities encoded by a complex object with disjunctions. We study two ways of making query evaluation faster and more space efficient. Partial normalization a...