The U. R. Strikes Back

Summary: Taxonomizes variants of the "universal relation" assumption and systematically rebuts prior objections, distinguishing fallacious, premature, and valid critiques. Presents practical remedies and the System/U query-interpretation algorithm to realize universal-relation benefits. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 604
Venue: PODS
Year: 1982
Pagerank: 0.00015338004
Overall Rank: 920 | 93.61%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Jeffrey D. Ullman

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 15 of 15 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
895	Updates Of Relational Views	1983	PODS	0.00015534879
1,062	Assumptions in Relational Database Theory	1982	PODS	0.00014366096
1,937	Windows On The World	1983	SIGMOD	0.00010029315
2,318	Efficient Query Answering in the Representative Instance Approach	1985	PODS	9.0400919e-05
2,481	LAURA: A Formal Data Model and her Logical Design Methodology	1983	VLDB	8.6870033e-05
3,090	Database Decomposition Into Fourth Normal Form	1983	VLDB	7.582872e-05
4,928	Universal Relation Views: A Pragmatic Approach	1983	VLDB	5.8222523e-05
6,168	Optimal Computation of Total Projections with Unions of Simple Chase Join Expressions	1984	SIGMOD	5.1716335e-05
6,995	Structure and Complexity of Bag Consistency	2021	PODS	4.8683245e-05
9,012	Querying Weak Instances	1984	PODS	4.4096041e-05
9,013	The Revenge Of The Jd	1983	PODS	4.4096041e-05
10,915	Consistency of Relations over Monoids	2024	PODS	4.1945683e-05
12,959	A Polynomial Time Algorithm for Testing Implications of a Join Dependency and Embodied Functional Dependencies	1988	SIGMOD	4.1945683e-05
12,995	On the Properties and Characterisation of Connection-trap-free Schemes (Extended Abstract)	1986	PODS	4.1945683e-05
13,028	Dependency Characterizations For Acyclic Database Schemes	1984	PODS	4.1945683e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 2 of 2 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
58	Efficient Optimization of a Class of Relational Expressions	1978	SIGMOD	0.00064826446
135	Can We Use The Universal Instance Assumption Without Using Nulls?	1981	SIGMOD	0.00042421957

Semantically Similar Papers

Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
135	Can We Use The Universal Instance Assumption Without Using Nulls?	1981	SIGMOD	0.00042421957
9,012	Querying Weak Instances	1984	PODS	4.4096041e-05
1,062	Assumptions in Relational Database Theory	1982	PODS	0.00014366096
3,332	A Universal Relation Database System Implemented Via the Network Model	1982	PODS	7.2123658e-05
4,939	Updating a Relational Database through a Universal Schema Interface	1985	PODS	5.8183127e-05
4,928	Universal Relation Views: A Pragmatic Approach	1983	VLDB	5.8222523e-05
1,039	Compatible Attributes In A Universal Relation	1982	PODS	0.00014489585
8,216	Answering Queries In Relational Databases	1983	SIGMOD	4.5575596e-05
3,461	Specifying Connections for a Universal Relation Scheme Database	1982	SIGMOD	7.0711544e-05
9,013	The Revenge Of The Jd	1983	PODS	4.4096041e-05