On the Decidability and Finite Controllability of Query Processing in Databases with Incomplete Information

Summary: Characterizes decidability/undecidability and the finite-controllability frontier for OWA query answering with functional (keys) and inclusion dependencies across CQs/UCQs (±negation, inequality), comparing finite vs unrestricted DB semantics. Derives consequences for IC implication and query containment, notably proving finite controllability of CQ containment under arbitrary inclusion dependencies and under key/foreign-key dependencies, resolving two long-standing open problems. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 1408
Venue: PODS
Year: 2006
Pagerank: 7.4181806e-05
Overall Rank: 3,433 | 76.45%
DOI: 10.1145/1142351.1142404

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Riccardo Rosati (University of Roma Tre)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{rosati_pods06,
        address = {New York, NY, USA},
        series = {{PODS} '06},
        title = {{On the Decidability and Finite Controllability of Query Processing in Databases with Incomplete Information}},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1142351.1142404},
        doi = {10.1145/1142351.1142404},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        author = {Rosati, Riccardo},
        year = {2006}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 6 of 6 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
2,544	Advanced Processing for Ontological Queries	2010	VLDB	8.4444438e-05
3,546	On Reconciling Data Exchange, Data Integration, and Peer Data Management	2007	PODS	7.3244507e-05
5,271	Incomplete Data: What Went Wrong, and How to Fix It	2014	PODS	6.2907571e-05
7,356	Red Spider Meets a Rainworm: Conjunctive Query Finite Determinacy Is Undecidable.	2016	PODS	5.6348348e-05
7,759	The Power of Tree Projections: Local Consistency, Greedy Algorithms, and Larger Islands of Tractability	2010	PODS	5.5505938e-05
8,275	On the BDD/FC Conjecture	2013	PODS	5.4574671e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 12 of 12 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
22	Data Integration: A Theoretical Perspective	2002	PODS	0.00056204792
33	Consistent Query Answers in Inconsistent Databases	1999	PODS	0.00049907763
134	Testing Containment of Conjunctive Queries Under Functional and Inclusion Dependencies (Extended Abstract)	1982	PODS	0.00030343737
162	Inclusion dependencies and their interaction with functional dependencies (Extended abstract)	1982	PODS	0.00027886326
225	Complexity of Answering Queries Using Materialized Views	1998	PODS	0.00024101949
377	Data Exchange: Getting to the Core	2003	PODS	0.00019643793
685	Composing Schema Mappings: Second-Order Dependencies to the Rescue	2004	PODS	0.00014979915
874	On the Decidability and Complexity of Query Answering over Inconsistent and Incomplete Databases	2003	PODS	0.00013481551
2,515	On XML Integrity Constraints in the Presence of DTDs	2001	PODS	8.4811795e-05
3,291	The Implication And Finite Implication Problems For Typed Template Dependencies	1982	PODS	7.5526697e-05
4,167	Integrity Constraints for XML	2000	PODS	6.8578387e-05
8,128	Decidability and Undecidability Results for the Termination Problem of Active Database Rules	1998	PODS	5.4825743e-05

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1	2,117	Obtaining Complete Answers from Incomplete Databases	1996	VLDB
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