SQL Nulls and Two-Valued Logic
Summary: Shows SQL's 3VL for NULLs can be replaced by an equally expressive 2VL by conflating unknown with false for null-involving conditions (core SQL:1999). Provides efficient translation to standard DBMS, enables optimizations, characterizes when 2VL/3VL coincide, and reports benchmark analysis plus a user-study preference for 2VL. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)
Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time
Authors
- 1. Leonid Libkin (RelationalAI; University of Edinburgh; École Normale Supérieure (Paris Sciences et Lettres University))
- 2. Liat Peterfreund (Gustave Eiffel University; National Centre for Scientific Research)
BibTeX Citation
@inproceedings{libkin_pods23,
address = {New York, NY, USA},
series = {{PODS} '23},
title = {{SQL Nulls and Two-Valued Logic}},
url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3584372.3588661},
doi = {10.1145/3584372.3588661},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
author = {Libkin, Leonid and Peterfreund, Liat},
year = {2023}
}Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 2 of 2 citing papers.
| Rank | Citing Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,133 | Database Research needs an Abstract Relational Query Language | 2026 | CIDR | 5.093636e-05 |
| 10,136 | On the Vexing Difficulty of Evaluating IN Predicates | 2026 | CIDR | 5.093636e-05 |
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 9 of 9 cited papers.
Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.
| Rank | Cited Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 264 | The Ubiquity of Large Graphs and Surprising Challenges of Graph Processing | 2018 | VLDB | 0.00022980015 |
| 490 | Design and Implementation of the LogicBlox System | 2015 | SIGMOD | 0.000175757 |
| 613 | Database Relations with Null Values (Extended Abstract) | 1982 | PODS | 0.00015723523 |
| 1,836 | Graph Pattern Matching in GQL and SQL/PGQ | 2022 | SIGMOD | 9.6489549e-05 |
| 3,925 | A Formal Semantics of SQL Queries, Its Validation, and Applications | 2018 | VLDB | 7.0140857e-05 |
| 4,811 | Uncertainty Annotated Databases - A Lightweight Approach for Approximating Certain Answers | 2019 | SIGMOD | 6.4983069e-05 |
| 4,972 | On the Optimization of Recursive Relational Queries: Application to Graph Queries | 2020 | SIGMOD | 6.4193234e-05 |
| 5,378 | Troubles with Nulls, Views from the Users | 2022 | VLDB | 6.2406439e-05 |
| 5,677 | Making SQL Queries Correct on Incomplete Databases: A Feasibility Study | 2016 | PODS | 6.1248899e-05 |
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| 6 | 12,414 | When Data Dependencies over SQL Tables Meet the Logics of Paradox and S-3 | 2010 | PODS |
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