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Non-determinism and weak constraints in Datalog

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Abstract

This paper introduces a simple and powerful extension of stratified DATALOG which permits to express various DB-complexity classes. The new language, called DATALOG¬s,c,p, extends DATALOG with stratified negation, a non-deterministic construct, calledchoice, and a weak form of constraints, calledpreference rules, that is, constraints that should be respected but, if they cannot be eventually enforced, they only invalidate the portions of the program which they are concerned with. Although DATALOG with stratified negation is not able to express all polynomial time queries,20) the introduction of the non-deterministic constructchoice permits to express, exactly, the ‘deterministic fragment’ of the class of DB-queriesP, under the non-deterministic semantics,NP, under the possible semantics, and coNP, under the certain semantics. The introduction of preference rules, further increases the expressive power of the language, and permits to express the complexity classes Σ p2 , under the possibility semantics, and Π p2 , under the certainty semantics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dip. Elettronica Informatica e Sistemistica, Università della Calabria, 87030, Rende, Italy

    Sergio Greco

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  1. Sergio Greco
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Sergio Greco: He is associate professor at University of Calabria (Italy); he was visiting researcher at the Microelectronics and Computer Technology (MCC) in Austin, Texas between 1990 and 1991 and at the University of California of Los Angeles in 1991 and 1996. Before to join University of Calabria he was with CRAI (Italy). His research interests are focused on deductive databases, logic programming and non-monotonic reasoning. In particular, his activity research focus on the computational aspects of deductive languages and on their extension to incorporate object orientation and non-monotonic constructs.

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Greco, S. Non-determinism and weak constraints in Datalog. New Gener Comput 16, 373–395 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037430

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03037430

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