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A SAT-Based System for Consistent Query Answering

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Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing – SAT 2019 (SAT 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11628))

Abstract

An inconsistent database is a database that violates one or more integrity constraints, such as functional dependencies. Consistent Query Answering is a rigorous and principled approach to the semantics of queries posed against inconsistent databases. The consistent answers to a query on an inconsistent database is the intersection of the answers to the query on every repair, i.e., on every consistent database that differs from the given inconsistent one in a minimal way. Computing the consistent answers of a fixed conjunctive query on a given inconsistent database can be a coNP-hard problem, even though every fixed conjunctive query is efficiently computable on a given consistent database.

We designed, implemented, and evaluated CAvSAT, a SAT-based system for consistent query answering. CAvSAT leverages a set of natural reductions from the complement of consistent query answering to SAT and to Weighted MaxSAT. The system is capable of handling unions of conjunctive queries and arbitrary denial constraints, which include functional dependencies as a special case. We report results from experiments evaluating CAvSAT on both synthetic and real-world databases. These results provide evidence that a SAT-based approach can give rise to a comprehensive and scalable system for consistent query answering.

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Acknowledgments

Dixit is supported by the Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) at UC Santa Cruz. Kolaitis is supported by NSF Grant IIS:1814152.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, USA

    Akhil A. Dixit & Phokion G. Kolaitis

  2. IBM Research - Almaden, San Jose, USA

    Phokion G. Kolaitis

Authors
  1. Akhil A. Dixit
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  2. Phokion G. Kolaitis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Akhil A. Dixit .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Mikoláš Janota

  2. University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Inês Lynce

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Dixit, A.A., Kolaitis, P.G. (2019). A SAT-Based System for Consistent Query Answering. In: Janota, M., Lynce, I. (eds) Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing – SAT 2019. SAT 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11628. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24258-9_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24258-9_8

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