Untyped Sets, Invention, and Computable Queries

Summary: Over untyped sets, set algebra without while is equivalent to the typed complex-object algebra; with while (or COL under stratified/inflationary semantics) it captures exactly the computable queries. Exhibits a calculus beyond computable queries, characterizes it via a typed complex-object calculus with invention, and introduces a "generic Turing machine" technical tool. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 878
Venue: PODS
Year: 1989
Pagerank: 8.6299917e-05
Overall Rank: 2,400 | 83.54%
DOI: 10.1145/73721.73755

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Richard Hull (University of Southern California)
2. Jianwen Su (University of Southern California)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{hull_pods89,
        address = {New York, NY, USA},
        series = {{PODS} '89},
        title = {{Untyped Sets, Invention, and Computable Queries}},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/73721.73755},
        doi = {10.1145/73721.73755},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        author = {Hull, Richard and Su, Jianwen},
        year = {1989}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 10 of 10 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
355	Object Identity As A Query Language Primitive	1989	SIGMOD	0.00020351749
1,864	The Expressiveness of a Family of Finite Set Languages	1991	PODS	9.5928463e-05
2,461	Towards Tractable Algebras for Bags (Extended Abstract)	1993	PODS	8.550394e-05
2,986	Tractable Query Languages for Complex Object Databases	1991	PODS	7.8912631e-05
3,128	On Accessing Object-Oriented Databases: Expressive Power, Complexity, and Restrictions	1989	SIGMOD	7.7292081e-05
4,467	A Query Language for List-Based Complex Objects	1994	PODS	6.6843364e-05
6,661	Complexity of Nonrecursive Logic Programs with Complex Values	1998	PODS	5.8101181e-05
7,885	IDLOG: Extending the Expressive Power of Deductive Database Languages	1990	SIGMOD	5.5228272e-05
8,773	Semi-determinism (extended abstract)	1992	PODS	5.3766157e-05
13,105	A Non-deterministic Deductive Database Language	1991	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 11 of 11 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
147	Making Smalltalk a Database System	1984	SIGMOD	0.00029474235
475	A Calculus for Complex Objects	1986	PODS	0.00017864549
544	A New Approach to Database Logic	1984	PODS	0.00016792556
702	PROCEDURAL AND DECLARATIVE DATABASE UPDATE LANGUAGES (Extended Abstract)	1988	PODS	0.00014855299
782	FAD, a Powerful and Simple Database Language	1987	VLDB	0.00014080876
989	Why Not Negation By Fixpoint?	1988	PODS	0.00012804792
1,026	Sets and Negation in a Logic Database Language (LDL1)	1987	PODS	0.00012578477
1,726	A Transaction Language Complete for Database Update and Specification	1987	PODS	9.9156202e-05
2,701	Possibilities and Limitations of Using Flat Operators in Nested Algebra Expressions	1988	PODS	8.240179e-05
2,897	On the Expressive Power of Database Queries with Intermediate Types	1988	PODS	7.9790527e-05
3,564	The Powerset Algebra As A Result Of Adding Programming Constructs To The Nested Relational Algebra	1988	SIGMOD	7.3058238e-05

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#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	13,097	On the power of Rule-Based Languages with Sets	1991	PODS
2	7,196	Typed Query Languages for Databases Containing Queries	1998	PODS
3	13,040	Investigation of Algebraic Query Optimisation for Database Programming Languages	1994	VLDB
4	1,890	Relational Expressive Power of Constraint Query Languages	1996	PODS
5	6,563	Functional Database Query Languages as Typed Lambda Calculi of Fixed Order (Extended Abstract)	1994	PODS
6	4,336	Languages for Relational Databases over Interpreted Structures	1997	PODS
7	2,986	Tractable Query Languages for Complex Object Databases	1991	PODS
8	3,128	On Accessing Object-Oriented Databases: Expressive Power, Complexity, and Restrictions	1989	SIGMOD
9	8,120	Formal Semantics and Analysis of Object Queries	2003	SIGMOD
10	2,897	On the Expressive Power of Database Queries with Intermediate Types	1988	PODS