Towards a Theory of Data-Diff: Optimal Synthesis of Succinct Data Modification Scripts

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework for the Data-Diff problem, aiming to find the shortest sequence of data modification operations, similar to SQL UPDATE, to transform one dataset into another efficiently.

Contribution

It provides a formal characterization of the Data-Diff problem, analyzing its complexity and proposing algorithms under various constraints on operations.

Findings

Complexity classifications for different Data-Diff scenarios

Algorithms for optimal data modification sequences

Insights into the computational limits of data transformation

Abstract

This paper addresses the Data-Diff problem: given a dataset and a subsequent version of the dataset, find the shortest sequence of operations that transforms the dataset to the subsequent version, under a restricted family of operations. We consider operations similar to SQL UPDATE, each with a condition (WHERE) that matches a subset of tuples and a modifier (SET) that makes changes to those matched tuples. We characterize the problem based on different constraints on the attributes and the allowed conditions and modifiers, providing complexity classification and algorithms in each case.