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Distributed Evaluation of the Datalog Query Language

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Database and Expert Systems Applications

Abstract

We present a technique for distributed evaluation of the deductive database language datalog, that is, prolog without function symbols. Datalog is both a powerful extension of relational database query languages like sql and a suitable language for constructing expert systems. Both of these types of applications tend to be computationally complex and to exhibit parallelism of the kinds known as Or parallelism and All-solutions And parallelism. We therefore expect large speedup by exploiting this parallelism.

The lack of function symbols ensures a finite model, in spite of presence of recursive clauses. We therefore discuss how to ensure termination while retaining completeness. Our distributed implementation uses a top/down interpretation strategy and is based on the problem-heap paradigm and dynamic load balancing. Tests show up to 14.2 times speedup, obtained on a Transputer network containing 16 Transputers.

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© 1990 Springer-Verlag/Wien

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Jensen, L.S., Kaae, E.J. (1990). Distributed Evaluation of the Datalog Query Language. In: Tjoa, A.M., Wagner, R. (eds) Database and Expert Systems Applications. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-7553-8_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-7553-8_29

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-211-82234-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-7553-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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