A Transaction Language Complete for Database Update and Specification

Summary: Introduce TL, a minimal transaction language built from tuple insertion/deletion, a while construct, and a bounded number of temporary domain values to express database updates. Define update- and specification-completeness and prove TL satisfies both, analyze safety and negation-vs-deletion trade-offs, and position results relative to prior work (e.g., Chandra–Harel). (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 801
Venue: PODS
Year: 1987
Pagerank: 0.00010092077
Overall Rank: 1,920 | 86.66%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Serge Abiteboul
2. Victor Vianu

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 17 of 17 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
353	Object Identity As A Query Language Primitive	1989	SIGMOD	0.00026275228
375	PROCEDURAL AND DECLARATIVE DATABASE UPDATE LANGUAGES (Extended Abstract)	1988	PODS	0.00025262028
1,020	ILOG: Declarative Creation and Manipulation of Object Identifiers	1990	VLDB	0.00014614067
1,450	Theory of Database Queries (Extended Abstract)	1988	PODS	0.00011926567
1,931	Foundations of Data-Aware Process Analysis: A Database Theory Perspective	2013	PODS	0.0001005178
2,520	Untyped Sets, Invention, and Computable Queries	1989	PODS	8.6044305e-05
2,808	On the Expressive Power of Database Queries with Intermediate Types	1988	PODS	8.0939851e-05
4,729	On the Equivalence of Database Restructurings Involving Object Identifiers	1991	PODS	5.9614713e-05
5,139	Extending the Relational Algebra to Support Transaction Time	1987	SIGMOD	5.6640252e-05
5,716	Datalog Unchained	2021	PODS	5.3569788e-05
6,695	Modelling Non Deterministic Queries and Updates In Deductive Databases	1988	VLDB	4.9550839e-05
6,824	A Transaction Logic for Database Specification	1988	SIGMOD	4.9096742e-05
7,363	IDLOG: Extending the Expressive Power of Deductive Database Languages	1990	SIGMOD	4.7461604e-05
9,539	Relational Database Behavior: Utilizing Relational Discrete Event Systems and Models	1989	PODS	4.3223802e-05
12,791	Static Analysis of Intensional Databases in U-Datalog	1996	PODS	4.1905499e-05
12,920	A Non-deterministic Deductive Database Language	1991	SIGMOD	4.1905499e-05
12,946	Declarative Expression of Deductive Database Updates	1989	PODS	4.1905499e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 6 of 6 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
38	Testing Implications Of Data Dependencies	1979	SIGMOD	0.0007528369
98	A Language Facility for Designing Interactive Database-Intensive Applications	1978	SIGMOD	0.00050311487
303	Relative Information Capacity of Simple Relational Database Schemata	1984	PODS	0.00028289399
4,643	Transactions And Integrity Constraints	1985	PODS	6.0213009e-05
5,890	Dynamic Constraints And Database Evolution	1983	PODS	5.2830191e-05
7,219	Deciding Properties of Transactional Schemas	1986	PODS	4.7930382e-05

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Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
5,613	A Model-Theoretic Approach to Updating Logical Databases (Extended Abstract)	1986	PODS	5.4101349e-05
7,219	Deciding Properties of Transactional Schemas	1986	PODS	4.7930382e-05
12,990	Axiomatization and Simplification Rules for Relational Transactions (Extended Abstract)	1987	PODS	4.1905499e-05
13,038	Coping with Complexity in Automated Reasoning about Database Systems	1985	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
13,044	Specification and Verification of Abstract Database Types	1984	PODS	4.1905499e-05
4,710	Verifiable Properties of Database Transactions	1996	PODS	5.9737802e-05
4,643	Transactions And Integrity Constraints	1985	PODS	6.0213009e-05
14,233	Synthesizing Database Transactions	1990	VLDB	-
6,824	A Transaction Logic for Database Specification	1988	SIGMOD	4.9096742e-05
375	PROCEDURAL AND DECLARATIVE DATABASE UPDATE LANGUAGES (Extended Abstract)	1988	PODS	0.00025262028