arXiv subjects

Dirk Leinders

Publications and source records attributed to Dirk Leinders.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2014

Relative Expressive Power of Navigational Querying on Graphs

Motivated by both established and new applications, we study navigational query languages for graphs (binary relations). The simplest language has only the two operators union and composition, together with the identity relation. We make more powerful languages by adding any of the following operators: intersection; set difference; projection; coprojection; converse; and the diversity relation. All these operators map binary relations to binary relations. We compare the expressive power of all resulting languages. We do this not only for general path queries (queries where the result may be any binary relation) but also for boolean or yes/no queries (expressed by the nonemptiness of an expression). For both cases, we present the complete Hasse diagram of relative expressiveness. In particular the Hasse diagram for boolean queries contains some nontrivial separations and a few surprising collapses.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2014

Similarity and bisimilarity notions appropriate for characterizing indistinguishability in fragments of the calculus of relations

Motivated by applications in databases, this paper considers various fragments of the calculus of binary relations. The fragments are obtained by leaving out, or keeping in, some of the standard operators, along with some derived operators such as set difference, projection, coprojection, and residuation. For each considered fragment, a characterization is obtained for when two given binary relational structures are indistinguishable by expressions in that fragment. The characterizations are based on appropriately adapted notions of simulation and bisimulation.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2004

The semijoin algebra and the guarded fragment

The semijoin algebra is the variant of the relational algebra obtained by replacing the join operator by the semijoin operator. We discuss some interesting connections between the semijoin algebra and the guarded fragment of first-order logic. We also provide an Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse game, characterizing the discerning power of the semijoin algebra. This game gives a method for showing that certain queries are not expressible in the semijoin algebra.

cs.DB↗

arXiv2004

On the expressive power of semijoin queries

The semijoin algebra is the variant of the relational algebra obtained by replacing the join operator by the semijoin operator. We provide an Ehrenfeucht-Fraissé game, characterizing the discerning power of the semijoin algebra. This game gives a method for showing that queries are not expressible in the semijoin algebra.

cs.DB↗