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International Conference on Database Theory

ICDT 1992: Database Theory — ICDT '92 pp 140–154Cite as

Naturally embedded query languages

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 646))

Abstract

We investigate the properties of a simple programming language whose main computational engine is structural recursion on sets. We describe a progression of sublanguages in this paradigm that (1) have increasing expressive power, and (2) illustrate robust conceptual restrictions thus exhibiting interesting additional properties. These properties suggest that we consider our sublanguages as candidates for “query languages”. Viewing query languages as restrictions of our more general programming language has several advantages. First, there is no “impedance mismatch” problem; the query languages are already there, so they share common semantic foundation with the general language. Second, we suggest a uniform characterization of nested relational and complex-object algebras in terms of some surprisingly simple operators;and we can make comparisons of expressiveness in a general framework. Third, we exhibit differences in expressive power that are not always based on complexity arguments, but use the idea that a query in one language may not be polymorphically expressible in another. Fourth, ideas of category theory can be profitably used to organize semantics and syntax, in particular our minimal (core) language is a well-understood categorical construction: a cartesian category with a strong monad on it. Finally, we bring out an algebraic perspective, that is, our languages come with equational theories, and categorical ideas can be used to derive a number of rather general identities that may serve as optimizations or as techniques for discovering optimizations.

The authors were partially supported by grants ONR NOOO-14-88-K-0634, NSF CCR-90-57570, NSF IRI-86-10617 and ARO DAAL03-89-C-0031PRIME. Peter Buneman was also supported by a SERC visiting research fellowship at Imperial College, London.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, 19104-6389, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Val Breazu-Tannen, Peter Buneman & Limsoon Wong

Authors
  1. Val Breazu-Tannen
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  2. Peter Buneman
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  3. Limsoon Wong
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Editor information

Joachim Biskup Richard Hull

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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Breazu-Tannen, V., Buneman, P., Wong, L. (1992). Naturally embedded query languages. In: Biskup, J., Hull, R. (eds) Database Theory — ICDT '92. ICDT 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 646. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56039-4_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-56039-4_38

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-56039-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47360-2

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