The revenge of the JD

Manifestations of the "universal relation assumption" can be seen either as definitions of a one-relation user view of data, or as algorithms for answering queries about arbitrary sets of attributes. In this paper we explore equivalences between these two points of view. We show that if the user's view is the representative instance, then our ability to answer queries about the universal relation, by applying relational algebra to the actual database, is equivalent to a "boundedness" condition on the dependencies of the database scheme. Further, whenever this condition holds, there is a finite union of lossless tableau mappings that produces the desired relation.

[1]  Marc Henry Graham.  Satisfying database states , 1982 .

[2]  Peter Honeyman,et al.  Testing satisfaction of functional dependencies , 1982, JACM.

[3]  Alfred V. Aho,et al.  Efficient optimization of a class of relational expressions , 1979, TODS.

[4]  David Maier,et al.  Specifying connections for a universal relation scheme database , 1982, SIGMOD '82.

[5]  Mihalis Yannakakis,et al.  Algebraic dependencies , 1980, 21st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (sfcs 1980).

[6]  Richard Hull.  Finitely Specifiable Implicational Dependency Families , 1984, JACM.

[7]  David Maier,et al.  Toward logical data independence: a relational query language without relations , 1982, SIGMOD '82.

[8]  A BernsteinPhilip.  Synthesizing third normal form relations from functional dependencies , 1976 .

[9]  Robert A. Kowalski,et al.  Logic as a Database Language , 1984, BNCOD.

[10]  David Maier,et al.  Testing implications of data dependencies , 1979, SIGMOD '79.

[11]  Yehoshua Sagiv,et al.  Can we use the universal instance assumption without using nulls? , 1981, SIGMOD '81.

[12]  Ronald Fagin,et al.  A simplied universal relation assumption and its properties , 1982, TODS.

[13]  Sylvia L. Osborn.  Towards A Universal Relation Interface , 1979, Fifth International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, 1979..

[14]  Alfred V. Aho,et al.  The theory of joins in relational data bases , 1977, 18th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (sfcs 1977).

[15]  David Maier,et al.  Maximal objects and the semantics of universal relation databases , 1983, TODS.

[16]  Jeffrey D. Ullman,et al.  Principles of Database Systems , 1980 .

[17]  Jeffrey D. Ullman,et al.  The U. R. strikes back , 1982, PODS.

[18]  Alberto O. Mendelzon,et al.  Notions of dependency satisfaction , 1982, PODS '82.

[19]  Mihalis Yannakakis,et al.  Testing the Universal Instance Assumption , 1980, Inf. Process. Lett..

[20]  Alberto O. Mendelzon.  Database states and their tableaux , 1984, TODS.

[21]  Mihalis Yannakakis,et al.  Algorithms for Acyclic Database Schemes , 1981, VLDB.

[22]  Eliezer L. Lozinskii.  Construction of relations in relational databases , 1980, TODS.

[23]  Jeffrey D. Ullman,et al.  Template Dependencies: A Large Class of Dependencies in Relational Databases and Its Complete Axiomatization , 1982, JACM.

[24]  Yehoshua Sagiv,et al.  A universal relation database system implemented via the network model , 1982, PODS '82.

[25]  Jack Minker,et al.  Logic and Data Bases , 1978, Springer US.