A Simple Algorithm for Consistent Query Answering under Primary Keys - Archive ouverte HAL
Conference Papers Year : 2023

A Simple Algorithm for Consistent Query Answering under Primary Keys

Anantha Padmanabha
  • Function : Author
  • PersonId : 1218922
Luc Segoufin
Cristina Sirangelo
  • Function : Author
  • PersonId : 1079588

Abstract

We consider the dichotomy conjecture for consistent query answering under primary key constraints stating that for every fixed Boolean conjunctive query q, testing whether it is certain over all repairs of a given inconsistent database is either polynomial time or coNP-complete. This conjecture has been verified for self-join-free and path queries. We propose a simple inflationary fixpoint algorithm for consistent query answering which, for a given database, naively computes a set Δ of subsets of database repairs with at most k facts, where k is the size of the query q. The algorithm runs in polynomial time and can be formally defined as: 1. Initialize Δ with all sets S of at most k facts such that S satisfies q. 2. Add any set S of at most k facts to Δ if there exists a block B (ie, a maximal set of facts sharing the same key) such that for every fact a of B there is a set S′∈Δ contained in (S∪{a}). The algorithm answers "q is certain" iff Δ eventually contains the empty set. The algorithm correctly computes certain answers when the query q falls in the polynomial time cases for self-join-free queries and path queries. For arbitrary queries, the algorithm is an under-approximation: The query is guaranteed to be certain if the algorithm claims so. However, there are polynomial time certain queries (with self-joins) which are not identified as such by the algorithm.

Dates and versions

hal-03953588 , version 1 (24-01-2023)

Licence

Identifiers

Cite

Diego Figueira, Anantha Padmanabha, Luc Segoufin, Cristina Sirangelo. A Simple Algorithm for Consistent Query Answering under Primary Keys. ICDT 2023 - International Conference on Database Theory, Mar 2023, Ioannina, Greece. ⟨hal-03953588⟩
108 View
0 Download

Altmetric

Share

More