Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
skip to main content
research-article

The Fine Classification of Conjunctive Queries and Parameterized Logarithmic Space

Published: 11 May 2015 Publication History

Abstract

We perform a fundamental investigation of the complexity of conjunctive query evaluation from the perspective of parameterized complexity. We classify sets of Boolean conjunctive queries according to the complexity of this problem. Previous work showed that a set of conjunctive queries is fixed-parameter tractable precisely when the set is equivalent to a set of queries having bounded treewidth. We present a fine classification of query sets up to parameterized logarithmic space reduction. We show that, in the bounded treewidth regime, there are three complexity degrees and that the properties that determine the degree of a query set are bounded pathwidth and bounded tree depth. We also engage in a study of the two higher degrees via logarithmic space machine characterizations and complete problems. Our work yields a significantly richer perspective on the complexity of conjunctive queries and, at the same time, suggests new avenues of research in parameterized complexity.

References

[1]
S. Abiteboul, R. Hull, and V. Vianu. 1995. Foundations of Databases. Addison-Wesley.
[2]
A. Blumensath and B. Courcelle. 2010. On the monadic second-order transduction hierarchy. Logical Methods in Computer Science 6, 2 (2010).
[3]
H. Bodlaender. 1998. A partial k-arboretum of graphs with bounded treewidth. Theoretical Computer Science 209 (1998), 1--45.
[4]
Ashok K. Chandra and Philip M. Merlin. 1977. Optimal implementation of conjunctive queries in relational data bases. In Proceedings of STOC’77. 77--90.
[5]
Hubie Chen and Martin Grohe. 2010. Constraint satisfaction with succinctly specified relations. Journal of Computing System Science 76, 8 (2010), 847--860.
[6]
Y. Chen, J. Flum, and M. Grohe. 2003. Bounded nondeterminism and alternation in parameterized complexity theory. In Proceedings of the 18th IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity. 13--29.
[7]
Y. Chen and M. Müller. 2014. Bounded variable logic, parameterized logarithmic space and Savitch’s theorem. 39th Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (2014).
[8]
A. Chiu, G. Davida, and B. Litow. 2001. Division in logspace-uniform NC1. Theoretical Informatics and Applications 35 (2001), 259--275.
[9]
N. Creignou, S. Khanna, and M. Sudan. 2001. Complexity Classification of Boolean Constraint Satisfaction Problems. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
[10]
Nadia Creignou, Phokion G. Kolaitis, and Heribert Vollmer (Eds.). 2008. Complexity of Constraints - An Overview of Current Research Themes. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5250. Springer.
[11]
V. Dalmau and P. Jonsson. 2004. The complexity of counting homomorphisms seen from the other side. Theoretical Computer Science 329 (2004), 315--323.
[12]
R. G. Downey and M. R. Fellows. 1999. Parameterized Complexity. Springer.
[13]
M. Elberfeld, C. Stockhusen, and T. Tantau. 2012. On the space complexity of parameterized problems. 7th International Symposium of Parameterized and Exact Computation, Springer LNCS 7535 (2012), 206--217.
[14]
T. Feder and M. Y. Vardi. 1999. The computational structure of monotone monadic SNP and constraint satisfaction: A study through datalog and group theory. SIAM Journal on Computing 28, 1 (1999), 57--104.
[15]
J. Flum, M. Frick, and M. Grohe. 2002. Query evaluation via tree-decompositions. Journal of the ACM 49, 6 (2002), 716--752.
[16]
J. Flum and M. Grohe. 2003. Describing parameterized complexity classes. Information and Computation 187 (2003), 291--319.
[17]
J. Flum and M. Grohe. 2006a. The parameterized complexity of counting problems. SIAM Journal on Computing 33 (2006), 892--922.
[18]
J. Flum and M. Grohe. 2006b. Parameterized Complexity Theory. Springer.
[19]
Georg Gottlob, Nicola Leone, and Francesco Scarcello. 2001. The complexity of acyclic conjunctive queries. Journal of the ACM 48, 3 (2001), 431--498.
[20]
Georg Gottlob, Nicola Leone, and Francesco Scarcello. 2002. Hypertree decompositions and tractable queries. Journal of Computer and Systems Science. 64, 3 (2002), 579--627.
[21]
Martin Grohe. 2007. The complexity of homomorphism and constraint satisfaction problems seen from the other side. Journal of the ACM 54, 1 (2007).
[22]
Martin Grohe, Thomas Schwentick, and Luc Segoufin. 2001. When is the evaluation of conjunctive queries tractable? In STOC 2001.
[23]
P. Kolaitis and M. Y. Vardi. 1998. Conjunctive-query containment and constraint satisfaction. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems 10 (1998, full version at: http://www.cs.rice.edu/∼vardi/papers), 205--213.
[24]
R. E. Ladner and N. A. Lynch. 1976. Relativization of questions about log space computability. Mathematical Systems Theory 10 (1976), 19--32.
[25]
Dániel Marx. 2010a. Can you beat treewidth? Theory of Computing 6, 1 (2010), 85--112. hlink="http://dx.doi.org/10.4086/toc.2010.v006a005" ?http://dx.?brk?doi.org/10.4086/toc.2010.v006a005
[26]
Dániel Marx. 2010b. Tractable hypergraph properties for constraint satisfaction and conjunctive queries. In Proceedings of the 42nd ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing. 735--744.
[27]
J. Nešetřil and P. O. de Mendez. 2006. Tree depth, subgraph coloring, and homomorphism bounds. European Journal of Combinatorics 27, 6 (2006), 1022--1041.
[28]
C. Papadimitriou and M. Yannakakis. 1999. On the complexity of database queries. Journal of Computers System Science 58, 3 (1999), 407--427.
[29]
Nicole Schweikardt, Thomas Schwentick, and Luc Segoufin. 2009. Database theory: Query languages. In Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook (2nd ed.), Mikhail J. Atallah and Marina Blanton (Eds.). Vol. 2: Special Topics and Techniques. CRC Press, Chapter 19.

Cited By

View all

Index Terms

  1. The Fine Classification of Conjunctive Queries and Parameterized Logarithmic Space

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Information & Contributors

      Information

      Published In

      cover image ACM Transactions on Computation Theory
      ACM Transactions on Computation Theory  Volume 7, Issue 2
      May 2015
      101 pages
      ISSN:1942-3454
      EISSN:1942-3462
      DOI:10.1145/2775140
      Issue’s Table of Contents
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 11 May 2015
      Accepted: 01 June 2014
      Revised: 01 April 2014
      Received: 01 May 2013
      Published in TOCT Volume 7, Issue 2

      Permissions

      Request permissions for this article.

      Check for updates

      Author Tags

      1. Conjunctive queries
      2. graph decompositions
      3. homomorphism problems
      4. parameterized logarithmic space

      Qualifiers

      • Research-article
      • Research
      • Refereed

      Funding Sources

      • FWF

      Contributors

      Other Metrics

      Bibliometrics & Citations

      Bibliometrics

      Article Metrics

      • Downloads (Last 12 months)7
      • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
      Reflects downloads up to 02 Sep 2024

      Other Metrics

      Citations

      Cited By

      View all
      • (2023)Parameterised Counting in LogspaceAlgorithmica10.1007/s00453-023-01114-285:10(2923-2961)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2023
      • (2021)On the Descriptive Complexity of Color CodingAlgorithms10.3390/a1403009614:3(96)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2021
      • (2021)Parameterised complexity of model checking and satisfiability in propositional dependence logicAnnals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence10.1007/s10472-021-09730-wOnline publication date: 27-Feb-2021
      • (2020)Parameterised Complexity of Model Checking and Satisfiability in Propositional Dependence LogicFoundations of Information and Knowledge Systems10.1007/978-3-030-39951-1_10(157-174)Online publication date: 17-Feb-2020
      • (2019)The Selfish Models PropertyProceedings of the 38th ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems10.1145/3294052.3319682(383-398)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2019
      • (2019)Testability of Homomorphism InadmissibilityProceedings of the 38th ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems10.1145/3294052.3319679(365-382)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2019
      • (2018)Tree-depth, quantifier elimination, and quantifier rankProceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science10.1145/3209108.3209160(225-234)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2018
      • (2017)One Hierarchy Spawns AnotherACM Transactions on Computational Logic10.1145/314380518:4(1-37)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2017
      • (2017)The Tractability Frontier of Graph-Like First-Order Query SetsJournal of the ACM10.1145/307340964:4(1-29)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2017
      • (2017)The Parameterized Space Complexity of Embedding Along a PathTheory of Computing Systems10.1007/s00224-016-9728-761:3(851-870)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2017
      • Show More Cited By

      View Options

      Get Access

      Login options

      Full Access

      View options

      PDF

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader

      Media

      Figures

      Other

      Tables

      Share

      Share

      Share this Publication link

      Share on social media