Comprehension syntax

  • Authors:

  • Peter Buneman;Leonid Libkin;Dan Suciu;Val Tannen;Limsoon Wong

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Pennsylvania, Department of Computer and Information Science, 200 South 33rd Street , Philadelphia PA;University of Pennsylvania, Department of Computer and Information Science, 200 South 33rd Street , Philadelphia PA;University of Pennsylvania, Department of Computer and Information Science, 200 South 33rd Street , Philadelphia PA;University of Pennsylvania, Department of Computer and Information Science, 200 South 33rd Street , Philadelphia PA;University of Pennsylvania, Department of Computer and Information Science, 200 South 33rd Street , Philadelphia PA

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGMOD Record
  • Year:
  • 1994

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Abstract

The syntax of comprehensions is very close to the syntax of a number of practical database query languages and is, we believe, a better starting point than first-order logic for the development of database languages. We give an informal account of a language based on comprehension syntax that deals uniformly with a variety of collection types; it also includes pattern matching, variant types and function definition. We show, again informally, how comprehension syntax is a natural fragment of structural recursion, a much more powerful programming paradigm for collection types. We also show that a very small "abstract syntax language" can serve as a basis for the implementation and optimization of comprehension syntax.