English

Termination of oblivious chase is undecidable

Databases 2015-12-08 v2

Abstract

We show that all--instances termination of chase is undecidable. More precisely, there is no algorithm deciding, for a given set T\cal T consisting of Tuple Generating Dependencies (a.k.a. Datalog^\exists program), whether the T\cal T-chase on DD will terminate for every finite database instance DD. Our method applies to Oblivious Chase, Semi-Oblivious Chase and -- after a slight modification -- also for Standard Chase. This means that we give a (negative) solution to the all--instances termination problem for all version of chase that are usually considered. The arity we need for our undecidability proof is three. We also show that the problem is EXPSPACE-hard for binary signatures, but decidability for this case is left open. Both the proofs -- for ternary and binary signatures -- are easy. Once you know them.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.4840,
  title  = {Termination of oblivious chase is undecidable},
  author = {Tomasz Gogacz and Jerzy Marcinkowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.4840},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:49:41.884Z