Year: 2017
Type: preprint
Abstract: To combine and query ordered data from multiple sources, one needs to handle uncertainty about the possible orderings. Examples of such "order-incomplete" data include integrated event sequences such as log entries, lists of properties (e.g., hotels and restaurants) ranked by an unknown function reflecting relevance or customer ratings, and documents edited concurrently with an uncertain order on edits. This paper introduces a query language for order-incomplete data, based on the positive relational algebra with order-aware accumulation. We use partial orders to represent order-incomplete data, and study possible and certain answers for queries in this context. We show that these problems are respectively NP-complete and coNP-complete, but identify many tractable cases depending on the query operators or input partial orders.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Amarilli, Antoine, Ba, Mouhamadou Lamine, Deutch, Daniel, Senellart, Pierre
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2737375105