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: 0.00010101977
Overall Rank: 1,916 | 86.68%
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
352	Object Identity As A Query Language Primitive	1989	SIGMOD	0.00026299604
374	PROCEDURAL AND DECLARATIVE DATABASE UPDATE LANGUAGES (Extended Abstract)	1988	PODS	0.00025286717
1,018	ILOG: Declarative Creation and Manipulation of Object Identifiers	1990	VLDB	0.00014627963
1,448	Theory of Database Queries (Extended Abstract)	1988	PODS	0.00011938045
1,928	Foundations of Data-Aware Process Analysis: A Database Theory Perspective	2013	PODS	0.00010061483
2,515	Untyped Sets, Invention, and Computable Queries	1989	PODS	8.6128871e-05
2,800	On the Expressive Power of Database Queries with Intermediate Types	1988	PODS	8.1019352e-05
4,730	On the Equivalence of Database Restructurings Involving Object Identifiers	1991	PODS	5.967211e-05
5,138	Extending the Relational Algebra to Support Transaction Time	1987	SIGMOD	5.6694679e-05
5,705	Datalog Unchained	2021	PODS	5.3621239e-05
6,693	Modelling Non Deterministic Queries and Updates In Deductive Databases	1988	VLDB	4.9598818e-05
6,825	A Transaction Logic for Database Specification	1988	SIGMOD	4.9143895e-05
7,368	IDLOG: Extending the Expressive Power of Deductive Database Languages	1990	SIGMOD	4.7507411e-05
9,538	Relational Database Behavior: Utilizing Relational Discrete Event Systems and Models	1989	PODS	4.3265281e-05
12,782	Static Analysis of Intensional Databases in U-Datalog	1996	PODS	4.1945683e-05
12,910	A Non-deterministic Deductive Database Language	1991	SIGMOD	4.1945683e-05
12,936	Declarative Expression of Deductive Database Updates	1989	PODS	4.1945683e-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	0.00075110004
96	A Language Facility for Designing Interactive Database-Intensive Applications	1978	SIGMOD	0.00050819255
302	Relative Information Capacity of Simple Relational Database Schemata	1984	PODS	0.00028316973
4,640	Transactions And Integrity Constraints	1985	PODS	6.0271345e-05
5,884	Dynamic Constraints And Database Evolution	1983	PODS	5.2881037e-05
7,220	Deciding Properties of Transactional Schemas	1986	PODS	4.7976464e-05

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Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
5,601	A Model-Theoretic Approach to Updating Logical Databases (Extended Abstract)	1986	PODS	5.4153386e-05
7,220	Deciding Properties of Transactional Schemas	1986	PODS	4.7976464e-05
12,979	Axiomatization and Simplification Rules for Relational Transactions (Extended Abstract)	1987	PODS	4.1945683e-05
13,027	Coping with Complexity in Automated Reasoning about Database Systems	1985	VLDB	4.1945683e-05
13,033	Specification and Verification of Abstract Database Types	1984	PODS	4.1945683e-05
4,709	Verifiable Properties of Database Transactions	1996	PODS	5.9795558e-05
4,640	Transactions And Integrity Constraints	1985	PODS	6.0271345e-05
14,219	Synthesizing Database Transactions	1990	VLDB	-
6,825	A Transaction Logic for Database Specification	1988	SIGMOD	4.9143895e-05
374	PROCEDURAL AND DECLARATIVE DATABASE UPDATE LANGUAGES (Extended Abstract)	1988	PODS	0.00025286717