A Unifying Framework to Characterize the Power of a Language to Express Relations
Paola Bonizzoni, Peter J. Cameron, Gianluca Della Vedova, Alberto, Leporati, Giancarlo Mauri

TL;DR
This paper introduces a unifying framework based on valid partitions to compare the expressive power of query languages across different database models, providing new insights and characterizations.
Contribution
It presents a novel framework using valid partitions to analyze and compare the expressive capabilities of database query languages and models.
Findings
New syntactic characterization of relational algebra's expressive power
Application of the framework to a graph-based data model
Equivalence to existing characterizations of relational algebra
Abstract
In this extended abstract we provide a unifying framework that can be used to characterize and compare the expressive power of query languages for different data base models. The framework is based upon the new idea of valid partition, that is a partition of the elements of a given data base, where each class of the partition is composed by elements that cannot be separated (distinguished) according to some level of information contained in the data base. We describe two applications of this new framework, first by deriving a new syntactic characterization of the expressive power of relational algebra which is equivalent to the one given by Paredaens, and subsequently by studying the expressive power of a simple graph-based data model.
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Taxonomy
TopicsAdvanced Database Systems and Queries · Semantic Web and Ontologies · Web Applications and Data Management
