Distributive implementation of relational operations

Like sorting algorithms, implementations of relational database operations can either be comparative or distributive or a hybrid of these. Relational intersection, natural join and union operations can be implemented distributively by bitwise Boolean operations on bit matrices that are superimposed coded representations of operand relations. A bitwise AND or OR operation yields a further bit matrix from which a result relation can be recovered by a backtrack search process that is fast if pruned by using highly parallel logic circuits implementing relational consistency conditions. The paper gives details of such circuits. The paper introduces a new mode of operation in which bit matrices are constructed on the fly during query answering. This mode is slower but has substantially lower hardware cost and no problem with deletion and with updating relations. Detection and elimination of spurious result tuples is straightforward.