Skip to main content
Log in

A SAT approach to query optimization in mediator systems

  • Published:
Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Mediator systems integrate distributed, heterogeneous and autonomous data sources, but their effective use requires the solution of hard query optimization problems. This is usually done in two phases: the selection of a set of data sources is similar to a set covering problem, and their ordering into a feasible and efficient query is a capability restricted join order problem. However, a two-phase approach is unlikely to find optimum queries. We describe a new single-phase approach that, under a simple cost model, can be encoded and solved as a SAT problem. Results on artificial benchmarks indicate that this is an interesting problem from the encoding and search viewpoints, and we use them to address three of the ten SAT challenges posed by Selman, Kautz and McAllester in 1997.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. F.A. Aloul, A. Ramani, I.L. Markov and K.A. Sakallah, PBS: A backtrack-based pseudo-Boolean solver and optimizer, in: Proc. of Fifth International Symposium on Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing, University of Cincinnati (2002) pp. 346–353.

  2. R. Backofen and S. Will, Excluding symmetries in constraint-based search, in: Proc. of Fifth International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1713 (Springer, 1999) pp. 73–87.

  3. P. Barth, A Davis-Putnam based enumeration algorithm for linear pseudo-Boolean optimization, Research Report mpi-i-95-2-003, Max-Plank Institut fur Informatik, Saarbrucken (1995).

    Google Scholar 

  4. A.L. Blum and M.L. Furst, Fast planning through planning graph analysis, Artificial Intelligence 90 (1997) 281–300.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. S. Bressan, C. Hian Goh, N. Levina, S. Madnick, A. Shah and M. Siegel, Context knowledge representation and reasoning in the context interchange system, Applied Intelligence 13(2) (2000) 165–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. F. Brglez, X.Y. Li and M.F. Stallman, The role of a skeptic agent in testing and benchmarking of SAT algorithms, in: Proc. of Fifth International Symposium on the Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing, University of Cincinnati (2002) pp. 354–361.

  7. A. Caprara, M. Fischetti and P. Toth, A heuristic method for the set covering problem, Operations Research 47 (1999) 730–743.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  8. D.A. Clark, J. Frank, I.P. Gent, E. MacIntyre, N. Tomov and T. Walsh, Local search and the number of solutions, in: Proc. of Second International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1118 (Springer, 1996) pp. 19–22.

  9. M. Crawford, M. Ginsberg, E. Luks and A. Roy, Symmetry breaking predicates for search problems, in: Proc. of Fifth International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (1996) pp. 148–159.

  10. H. Garcia-Molina et al., The tsimmis approach to mediation: data models and languages, Journal of Intelligent Information Systems 8 (1997) 117–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. I.P. Gent and B. Smith, Symmetry breaking during search in constraint programming, in: Proc. of Fourteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2000) pp. 599–603.

  12. M.L. Ginsberg, Dynamic backtracking, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 1 (1993) 25–46.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. G. Wiederhold, Mediators in the architecture of future information systems, IEEE Computer (March 1992) 38–49.

  14. E. Goldberg and Y. Novikov, BerkMin: A fast and robust SAT-solver, Design, Automation and Test in Europe (March 2002) 142–149.

  15. M. Gondran and M. Minoux, Graphs and Algorithms, Wiley-Interscience Series in Discrete Mathematics (Wiley-Interscience, 1984).

  16. L. Haas, D. Kossman, E. Wimmers and J. Yang, An optimizer for heterogeneous systems with non-standard data and search capabilities, IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin, Special Issue on Query Processing with Non-Standard Data (1997) 37–43.

  17. E.A. Hirsch and A. Kojevnikov, UnitWalk: A new sat solver that uses local search guided by unit clause elimination, in: Proc. of Fifth International Symposium on the Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing, University of Cincinnati (2002) pp. 35–42.

  18. H. Kautz, D. McAllester and B. Selman, Exploiting variable dependency in local search, in: Poster Sessions of the Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (1997).

  19. H. Kautz and B. Selman, Planning as satisfiability, in: Proc. of Tenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (1992) pp. 359–363.

  20. H. Kautz and B. Selman, Pushing the envelope: Planning, propositional logic and stochastic search, in: Proc. of Thirteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2 (MIT Press, 1996) pp. 1194–1201.

  21. A. Levy, A. Rajaraman and J. Ordille, Querying heterogeneous information sources using source descriptions, in: Proc. of Twenty Second Conference on Very Large Databases, (1996) pp. 251–262.

  22. M. Moskewicz, C. Madigan, Y. Zhao, L. Zhang and S. Malik, Chaff: Engineering an efficient SAT solver, in: Proc. of Thirty Ninth Design Automation Conference, Las Vegas (June 2001).

  23. Y. Papakonstantinou, A. Gupta and L. Haas, Capabilities-based query rewriting in mediator systems, in: Proc. of International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Information Systems (1996).

  24. S.D. Prestwich and S. Bressan, A SAT approach to query optimization in mediator systems, Proc. of Fifth International Symposium on the Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing, University of Cincinnati (2002) pp. 252–259.

  25. S.D. Prestwich, Negative effects of modeling techniques on search performance, Annals of Operations Research 118 (2003) 137–150.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  26. S.D. Prestwich, SAT problems with chains of dependent variables, in: Discrete Applied Mathematics, Vol. 3037 (Elsevier, 2002) 1–22.

  27. S.D. Prestwich, Randomised backtracking for linear pseudo-Boolean constraint problems, in: Proc. of Fourth International Workshop on Integration of AI and OR techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, le Croisic, France (2002) 7–20.

    Google Scholar 

  28. S.D. Prestwich, A Hybrid search architecture applied to hard random 3-SAT and low-autocorrelation binary sequences, in: Proc. of Sixth International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1894 (Springer, 2000) pp. 337–352.

  29. J.-F. Puget, On the satisfiability of symmetrical constrained satisfaction problems, in: Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, eds. J. Komorowski and Z.W. Ras, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 689 (Springer, 1993) pp. 350–361.

  30. A. Rajaraman, Y. Sagiv and J.D. Ullman, Answering queries using templates with binding patterns, in: Proc. of Fourteenth ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (1995) pp. 105–112.

  31. B. Selman, H. Kautz and B. Cohen, Noise strategies for improving local search, in: Proc. of Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI Press, 1994) pp. 337–343.

  32. B. Selman, H. Kautz and D. McAllester, Ten challenges in propositional reasoning and search, in: Proc. of Fifteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Morgan Kaufmann, 1997) pp. 50–54.

  33. Y. Shang and B.W. Wah, A discrete Lagrangian-based global-search method for solving satisfiability problems, Journal of Global Optimization 12(1) (1998) 61–99.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  34. V.S. Subrahmanian et al., Hermes: A heterogeneous reasoning and mediator system, http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/hermes/overview/paper (1996).

  35. A. Tomasic, R. Amouroux, P. Bonnet, O. Kapitskaia, H. Naacke and L. Raschid, The distributed information search component (Disco) and the world-wide web, in: Proc. of ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data (1997).

  36. J.P. Walser, Solving linear pseudo-Boolean constraints with local search, in: Proc. of Eleventh Conference on Artificial Intelligence (1997) 269–274.

  37. J. Warners and H. van Maaren, Solving satisfiability problems using elliptic approximations: effective branching rules, Discrete Applied Mathematics 107 (2000) 241–259.

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  38. W. Wei and B, Selman, Accelerating random walks, in: Proc. of Eighth International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2470 (Springer, 2002) pp. 216–232.

  39. R. Yerneni, C. Li, J. Ullman and H. Garcia-Molina, Optimizing large join queries in mediation systems, in: Proc. of International Conference on Database Theory (1999).

  40. M. Yokoo, Why adding more constraints makes a problem easier for hill-climbing algorithms: Analyzing landscapes of CSPs, in: Proc. of Third International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1330 (Springer, 1997) pp. 356–370.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Additional information

This research was partially funded by grant R-252-000-064-107 from the National University of Singapore, and grant 00/PI.1/C075 from Science Foundation Ireland.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Prestwich, S., Bressan, S. A SAT approach to query optimization in mediator systems. Ann Math Artif Intell 43, 195–210 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10472-005-0429-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10472-005-0429-1

Keywords

Navigation