Constraint Databases

Abstract

Paris Kanellakis's pioneering paper in 1990 provided a framework for constraint databases by combining concepts from constraint logic programming and relational databases. The principal idea is to generalize a tuple (or record) data type to a conjunction of constraints from an appropriate language; for example, order constraints or linear arithmetic constraints. Such a tuple can be seen as representing a large, possibly even infinite, set of points in a compact way (e.g., for spatial databases and GIS). Constraint databases have since become a very active area of database research.

After a brief introduction to relational databases, we explain the semantics of constraint database relations and queries, providing complexity results for several specific constraint classes. We consider the various relational querying paradigms (declarative, procedural, and logic programming) and their reinterpretation in the presence of constraints as first-class data. We highlight the basic design principles for constraint databases, such as query closure and safety, efficiency of data representation and data access, and query optimization.

We discuss Paris Kanellakis's more recent work, including work on indexing, and constraint query algebras, and survey other developments in the area (aggregation, complex objects, expressive power). The ultimate goal of Paris Kanellakis's research was to enable commercial-quality implementations of constraint databases. We look at some possible applications for constraint databases, and at the implementational efforts currently under way. We conclude by considering the issues and the challenges that lay ahead.