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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 586–591Cite as

Constraint Query Languages

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Definition

A constraint query language is a query language for constraint databases.

Historical Background

The field of constraint databases was initiated in 1990 in a paper by Kanellakis, Kuper, and Revesz [1]. The goal was to obtain a database-style, optimizable version of constraint logic programming. It grew out of the research on datalog and constraint logic programming. The key idea was that the notion of tuple in a relational database could be replaced by a conjunction of constraints from an appropriate language and that many of the features of the relational model could then be extended in an appropriate way. In particular, standard query languages such as those based on first-order logic and datalog could be extended to such a model.

It soon became clear, however, that recursive constraint query languages led to noneffective languages. The focus therefore shifted to non-recursive constraint query languages. The standard query language is the constraint relational calculus (or...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Kanellakis PC, Kuper GM, Revesz PZ. Constraint query languages. J Comput Syst Sci. 1995;51(1):26–52.

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  2. Kuper GM, Libkin L, Paredaens J. Constraint databases. Berlin: Springer; 2000.

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  3. Revesz PZ. Introduction to constraint databases. New York: Springer; 2002.

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  4. Benedikt M, Libkin L. Relational queries over interpreted structures. J ACM. 2000;47(4):644–80.

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  5. Grumbach S, Su J. Queries with arithmetical constraints. Theor Comput Sci. 1997;173(1):151–81.

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  6. Gyssens M, Van den Bussche J, Van Gucht D. Complete geometric query languages. J Comput Syst Sci. 1999;58(3):483–511.

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  7. Kuijpers B, Paredaens J, Van den Bussche J. Topological elementary equivalence of closed semi-algebraic sets in the real plane. J Symb Log. 2000;65(4):1530–55.

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  8. Benedikt M, Kuijpers B, Löding C, Van den Bussche J, Wilke T. A characterization of first-order topological properties of planar spatial data. J. ACM. 2006;53(2):273–305.

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  9. Geerts F, Kuijpers B, Van den Bussche J. Linearization and completeness results for terminating transitive closure queries on spatial databases. SIAM J Comput. 2006;35(6):1386–439.

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  10. Benedikt M, Libkin L. Aggregate operators in constraint query languages. J Comput Syst Sci. 2002;64(3):628–54.

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  11. Benedikt M, Grohe M, Libkin L, Segoufin L. Reachability and connectivity queries in constraint databases. J Comput Syst Sci. 2003;66(1):169–206.

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  12. Van den Bussche J. Constraint databases. A tutorial introduction ACM SIGMOD Record. 2000;29(3):44–51.

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  13. Libkin L. Embedded finite models and constraint databases. In: Grädel E, Kolaitis PG, Libkin L, Marx M, Spencer J, Vardi MY, Venema Y, Weinstein S, editors. Finite Model Theory and Its Applications. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer; 2007.

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  14. Geerts F, Kuijpers B. Real algebraic geometry and constraint databases. In: Aiello M, Pratt-Hartmann I, Van Benthem J, editors. Handbook of Spatial Logics. Dordrecht: Springer; 2007.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    Floris Geerts

Authors
  1. Floris Geerts
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Floris Geerts .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Leonid Libkin

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Geerts, F. (2018). Constraint Query Languages. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_1240

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