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Jerzy Marcinkowski

Publications and source records attributed to Jerzy Marcinkowski.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Disjunctive Databases for Representing Repairs

This paper addresses the problem of representing the set of repairs of a possibly inconsistent database by means of a disjunctive database. Specifically, the class of denial constraints is considered. We show that, given a database and a set of denial constraints, there exists a (unique) disjunctive database, called canonical, which represents the repairs of the database w.r.t. the constraints and is contained in any other disjunctive database with the same set of minimal models. We propose an algorithm for computing the canonical disjunctive database. Finally, we study the size of the canonical disjunctive database in the presence of functional dependencies for both repairs and cardinality-based repairs.

cs.DB↗

Minimal-Change Integrity Maintenance Using Tuple Deletions

We address the problem of minimal-change integrity maintenance in the context of integrity constraints in relational databases. We assume that integrity-restoration actions are limited to tuple deletions. We identify two basic computational issues: repair checking (is a database instance a repair of a given database?) and consistent query answers (is a tuple an answer to a given query in every repair of a given database?). We study the computational complexity of both problems, delineating the boundary between the tractable and the intractable. We consider denial constraints, general functional and inclusion dependencies, as well as key and foreign key constraints. Our results shed light on the computational feasibility of minimal-change integrity maintenance. The tractable cases should lead to practical implementations. The intractability results highlight the inherent limitations of any integrity enforcement mechanism, e.g., triggers or referential constraint actions, as a way of performing minimal-change integrity maintenance.

cs.DB↗

On the Computational Complexity of Consistent Query Answers

We consider here the problem of obtaining reliable, consistent information from inconsistent databases -- databases that do not have to satisfy given integrity constraints. We use the notion of consistent query answer -- a query answer which is true in every (minimal) repair of the database. We provide a complete classification of the computational complexity of consistent answers to first-order queries w.r.t. functional dependencies and denial constraints. We show how the complexity depends on the {\em type} of the constraints considered, their {\em number}, and the {\em size} of the query. We obtain several new PTIME cases, using new algorithms.

cs.DB↗