Generalized Covers for Conjunctive Queries

Abstract

Covers of query results were introduced as succinct lossless representations of join query outputs. A cover is a subset of the query result from which we can efficiently enumerate the output with constant delay and linear preprocessing time. However, covers are dependent on a single tree decomposition of the query. In this work, we generalize the notion of a cover to a set of multiple tree decompositions. We show that this generalization can potentially produce asymptotically smaller covers while maintaining the properties of constant-delay enumeration and linear preprocessing time. In particular, given a set of tree decompositions, we can determine exactly the asymptotic size of a minimum cover, which is tied to the notion of entropic width of the query. We also provide a simple greedy algorithm that computes this cover efficiently. Finally, we relate covers to semiring circuits when the semiring is idempotent.