Related papers: A Decidable Case of Query Determinacy: Project-Sel…
We study the problem of deciding satisfiability of first order logic queries over views, our aim being to delimit the boundary between the decidable and the undecidable fragments of this language. Views currently occupy a central place in…
We solve a well known, long-standing open problem in relational databases theory, showing that the conjunctive query determinacy problem (in its "unrestricted" version) is undecidable.
We consider the two-variable fragment of first-order logic with one distinguished binary predicate constrained to be interpreted as a transitive relation. The finite satisfiability problem for this logic is shown to be decidable, in triply…
In our paper [G{\l}uch, Marcinkowski, Ostropolski-Nalewaja, LICS ACM, 2018] we have solved an old problem stated in [Calvanese, De Giacomo, Lenzerini, Vardi, SPDS ACM, 2000] showing that query determinacy is undecidable for Regular Path…
A query Q is monotonically determined over a set of views if Q can be expressed as a monotonic function of the view image. In the case of relational algebra views and queries, monotonic determinacy coincides with rewritability as a union of…
Two natural decision problems regarding the XML query language XQuery are well-definedness and semantic type-checking. We study these problems in the setting of a relational fragment of XQuery. We show that well-definedness and semantic…
We provide a positive answer to a long-standing open question of the decidability of the not-contains string predicate. Not-contains is practically relevant, for instance in symbolic execution of string manipulating programs. Particularly,…
It is shown that order-invariance of two-variable first-logic is decidable in the finite. This is an immediate consequence of a decision procedure obtained for the finite satisfiability problem for existential second-order logic with two…
We study the question of whether a given regular language of finite trees can be defined in first-order logic. We develop an algebraic approach to address this question and we use it to derive several necessary and sufficient conditions for…
For a given set of queries (which are expressions in some query language) $\mathcal{Q}=\{Q_1$, $Q_2, \ldots Q_k\}$ and for another query $Q_0$ we say that $\mathcal{Q}$ determines $Q_0$ if -- informally speaking -- for every database…
We study fragments of first-order logic and of least fixed point logic that allow only unary negation: negation of formulas with at most one free variable. These logics generalize many interesting known formalisms, including modal logic and…
We solve a well known and long-standing open problem in database theory, proving that Conjunctive Query Finite Determinacy Problem is undecidable. The technique we use builds on the top of our Red Spider method which we developed in our…
Decision procedures can be either theory-specific, e.g., Presburger arithmetic, or theory-generic, applying to an infinite number of user-definable theories. Variant satisfiability is a theory-generic procedure for quantifier-free…
We consider expressions built up from binary relation names using the operators union, composition, and set difference. We show that it is undecidable to test whether a given such expression $e$ is finitely satisfiable, i.e., whether there…
We propose a generic framework for establishing the decidability of a wide range of logical entailment problems (briefly called querying), based on the existence of countermodels that are structurally simple, gauged by certain types of…
We study first-order logic over unordered structures whose elements carry a finite number of data values from an infinite domain. Data values can be compared wrt.\ equality. As the satisfiability problem for this logic is undecidable in…
In their classical 1993 paper [CV93] Chaudhuri and Vardi notice that some fundamental database theory results and techniques fail to survive when we try to see query answers as bags (multisets) of tuples rather than as sets of tuples. But…
Consider a linear ordering equipped with a finite sequence of monadic predicates. If the ordering contains an interval of order type \omega or -\omega, and the monadic second-order theory of the combined structure is decidable, there exists…
We show that the decidability of the first-order theory of the language that combines Boolean algebras of sets of uninterpreted elements with Presburger arithmetic operations. We thereby disprove a recent conjecture that this theory is…
The notion of a real-valued function is central to mathematics, computer science, and many other scientific fields. Despite this importance, there are hardly any positive results on decision procedures for predicate logical theories that…