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How to Make SQL Stand for String Query Language

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Research Issues in Structured and Semistructured Database Programming (DBPL 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1949))

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Abstract

A string database is simply a collection of tables, the columns of which contain strings over some given alphabet.We address in this paper the issue of designing a simple, user friendly query language for string databases. We focus on the language FO(●), which is classical first order logic extended with a concatenation operator, and where quantifiers range over the set of all strings.We wish to capture all string queries, i.e., well-typed and computable mappings involving a notion of string genericity. Unfortunately, unrestricted quantification may allow some queries to have infinite output. This leads us to study the “safety” problem for FO(●), that is, how to build syntactic and/or semantic restrictions so as to obtain a language expressing only queries with finite output, hopefully all string queries. We introduce a family of such restrictions and study their expressivness and complexity. We prove that none of these languages express all string queries. We prove that a family of these languages is equivalent to a simple, tractable language that we call SriQueL, standing for String Query Language, which thus emerges a robust and natural language suitable for string querying.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Concordia University, H3G 1M8, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Gösta Grahne

  2. LRI, Université Paris-Sud, 91405, Orsay Cedex, France

    Emmanuel Waller

Authors
  1. Gösta Grahne
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  2. Emmanuel Waller
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Strathclyde, G1 1XH, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

    Richard Connor

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 6 King’s College Road, M5S 3H5, Ontario, Toronto, Canada

    Alberto Mendelzon

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Grahne, G., Waller, E. (2000). How to Make SQL Stand for String Query Language. In: Connor, R., Mendelzon, A. (eds) Research Issues in Structured and Semistructured Database Programming. DBPL 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1949. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44543-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44543-9_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-41481-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44543-2

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