Programming with logical queries, bulk updates, and hypothetical reasoning

Author

Chen, Weidong

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci. & Eng., Southern Methodist Univ., Dallas, TX, USA

Volume

9

Issue

4

fYear

1997

Firstpage

587

Lastpage

599

Abstract

The paper presents a language of update programs that integrates logical queries, bulk updates and hypothetical reasoning in a seamless manner. There is no syntactic or semantic distinction between queries and updates. Update programs extend logic programs with negation in both syntax and semantics. They allow bulk updates in which an arbitrary update is applied simultaneously for all answers of an arbitrary query. Hypothetical reasoning is naturally supported by testing the success or failure of an update. We describe an alternating fixpoint semantics of update programs and show that it can express all nondeterministic database transformations

Keywords

computational linguistics; deductive databases; heuristic programming; logic programming; query languages; query processing; alternating fixpoint semantics; arbitrary query; arbitrary update; bulk updates; database languages; hypothetical reasoning; logic programs; logical queries; negation; nondeterministic database transformations; semantic distinction; semantics; syntax; update programs; Calculus; Computer Society; Database languages; Database systems; Logic programming; Proposals; Query processing; Relational databases; Testing; Transaction databases;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-4347

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/69.617052

Filename

617052