Implementation of logical query languages for databases

• Authors: Jeffrey D. Ullman
• Venue: ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS)
• Year: 1985

We examine methods of implementing queries about relational databases in the case where these queries are expressed in first-order logic as a collection of Horn clauses. Because queries may be defined recursively, straightforward methods of query evaluation do not always work, and a variety of strategies have been proposed to handle subsets of recursive queries. We express such query evaluation techniques as “capture rules” on a graph representing clauses and predicates. One essential property of capture rules is that they can be applied independently, thus providing a clean interface for query-evaluation systems that use several different strategies in different situations. Another is that there be an efficient test for the applicability of a given rule. We define basic capture rules corresponding to application of operators from relational algebra, a top-down capture rule corresponding to “backward chaining,” that is, repeated resolution of goals, a bottom-up rule, corresponding to “forward chaining,” where we attempt to deduce all true facts in a given class, and a “sideways” rule that allows us to pass results from one goal to another.