Binding Propagation Beyond the Reach of Rule/Goal Graphs

Abstract Rule / goal graphs have been popularly used in the analysis of binding propagation in deductive databases. Some interesting techniques, such as the Magic rule rewriting and its variations, have been developed based on such an analysis. We re-examine the binding propagation in linear recursions and demonstrate that the rule / goal graph cannot capture the binding propagation information for certain kinds of linear recursions, and hence the Magic rule rewriting technique cannot derive the minimal Magic Sets for such recursions. A compilation technique, based on the simulation of recursive rule expansions, is proposed to solve this problem.