A Formal Semantics of SQL Queries, Its Validation, and Applications
Summary: Defines and experimentally validates formal semantics for real-world basic SQL, including subqueries, set/bag operations, name binding, and nulls. Establishes bag/null-aware equivalence to relational algebra and proves SQL’s three-valued logic adds no expressive power. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)
Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time
Authors
- 1. Paolo Guagliardo (University of Edinburgh)
- 2. Leonid Libkin (University of Edinburgh)
BibTeX Citation
@article{guagliardo_vldb18,
title = {{A Formal Semantics of SQL Queries, Its Validation, and Applications}},
author = {Guagliardo, Paolo and Libkin, Leonid},
journal = {PVLDB},
series = {{VLDB} '18},
volume = {11},
number = {1},
pages = {27--39},
doi = {10.14778/3136610.3136613},
url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3136610.3136613},
year = {2018}
}Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 10 of 10 citing papers.
| Rank | Citing Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 547 | Cypher: An Evolving Query Language for Property Graphs | 2018 | SIGMOD | 0.00016731552 |
| 1,829 | Axiomatic Foundations and Algorithms for Deciding Semantic Equivalences of SQL Queries | 2018 | VLDB | 9.6671311e-05 |
| 1,982 | WeTune: Automatic Discovery and Verification of Query Rewrite Rules | 2022 | SIGMOD | 9.3573897e-05 |
| 5,353 | QED: A Powerful Query Equivalence Decider for SQL | 2024 | VLDB | 6.2519268e-05 |
| 6,950 | SQL Nulls and Two-Valued Logic | 2023 | PODS | 5.7303405e-05 |
| 7,756 | Semantic Conformance Testing of Relational DBMS | 2025 | VLDB | 5.551523e-05 |
| 7,895 | Updating Graph Databases with Cypher | 2019 | VLDB | 5.52019e-05 |
| 11,138 | TypeQL: A Type-Theoretic & Polymorphic Query Language | 2024 | PODS | 5.093636e-05 |
| 11,206 | Understanding and Reusing Test Suites Across Database Systems | 2024 | SIGMOD | 5.093636e-05 |
| 11,367 | Querying Incomplete Numerical Data: Between Certain and Possible Answers | 2023 | PODS | 5.093636e-05 |
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 3 of 3 cited papers.
Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.
| Rank | Cited Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 910 | Cosette: An Automated Prover for SQL | 2017 | CIDR | 0.00013285905 |
| 2,423 | Algebraic Properties of Bag Data Types | 1991 | VLDB | 8.6016807e-05 |
| 5,677 | Making SQL Queries Correct on Incomplete Databases: A Feasibility Study | 2016 | PODS | 6.1248899e-05 |
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Semantically Similar Papers
| # | Overall Rank | Paper | Year | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4,032 | On Relational Algebra With Marked Nulls | 1984 | PODS |
| 2 | 13,040 | Investigation of Algebraic Query Optimisation for Database Programming Languages | 1994 | VLDB |
| 3 | 12,492 | Equivalence of SQL Queries In Presence of Embedded Dependencies | 2009 | PODS |
| 4 | 6,627 | Schema-free SQL | 2014 | SIGMOD |
| 5 | 4,336 | Languages for Relational Databases over Interpreted Structures | 1997 | PODS |
| 6 | 6,950 | SQL Nulls and Two-Valued Logic | 2023 | PODS |
| 7 | 5,062 | Equivalence of Queries Combining Set and Bag-Set Semantics | 2006 | PODS |
| 8 | 1,829 | Axiomatic Foundations and Algorithms for Deciding Semantic Equivalences of SQL Queries | 2018 | VLDB |
| 9 | 8,120 | Formal Semantics and Analysis of Object Queries | 2003 | SIGMOD |
| 10 | 1,380 | Null Values in Data Base Management: A Denotational Semantics Approach | 1979 | SIGMOD |