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Optimally Rewriting Formulas and Database Queries: A Confluence of Term Rewriting, Structural Decomposition, and Complexity

Authors Hubie Chen, Stefan Mengel

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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Logic
  • Theory of computation → Database query processing and optimization (theory)
Keywords
  • width
  • query rewriting
  • structural decomposition
  • term rewriting

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Abstract

A central computational task in database theory, finite model theory, and computer science at large is the evaluation of a first-order sentence on a finite structure. In the context of this task, the width of a sentence, defined as the maximum number of free variables over all subformulas, has been established as a crucial measure, where minimizing width of a sentence (while retaining logical equivalence) is considered highly desirable. An undecidability result rules out the possibility of an algorithm that, given a first-order sentence, returns a logically equivalent sentence of minimum width; this result motivates the study of width minimization via syntactic rewriting rules, which is this article’s focus. For a number of common rewriting rules (which are known to preserve logical equivalence), including rules that allow for the movement of quantifiers, we present an algorithm that, given a positive first-order sentence ϕ, outputs the minimum-width sentence obtainable from ϕ via application of these rules. We thus obtain a complete algorithmic understanding of width minimization up to the studied rules; this result is the first one - of which we are aware - that establishes this type of understanding in such a general setting. Our result builds on the theory of term rewriting and establishes an interface among this theory, query evaluation, and structural decomposition theory.

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Hubie Chen and Stefan Mengel. Optimally Rewriting Formulas and Database Queries: A Confluence of Term Rewriting, Structural Decomposition, and Complexity. In 27th International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 290, pp. 16:1-16:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICDT.2024.16

Author Details

Hubie Chen
  • Department of Informatics, King’s College London, UK
Stefan Mengel
  • Univ. Artois, CNRS, Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Lens (CRIL), France

Funding

  • Chen, Hubie: acknowledges the support of EPSRC grants EP/V039318/1 and EP/X03190X/1.
  • Mengel, Stefan: partially supported by the ANR project EQUUS ANR-19-CE48-0019.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Carsten Fuhs, Moritz Müller, and Riccardo Treglia for useful feedback and pointers.

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