Tractable Query Languages for Complex Object Databases

Summary: Analyzes calculus-based queries on complex-object databases, proving that usage of higher-order types crucially affects query complexity. Shows fixpoint extensions (with range-restricted variants) capture PTIME under a “full-types” assumption, yielding tractable query languages. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 947
Venue: PODS
Year: 1991
Pagerank: 7.8912631e-05
Overall Rank: 2,986 | 79.52%
DOI: 10.1145/113413.113442

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Stphane Grumbach (INRIA)
2. Victor Vianu (University of California San Diego)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{grumbach_pods91,
        address = {New York, NY, USA},
        series = {{PODS} '91},
        title = {{Tractable Query Languages for Complex Object Databases}},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/113413.113442},
        doi = {10.1145/113413.113442},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        author = {Grumbach, Stphane and Vianu, Victor},
        year = {1991}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 8 of 8 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
2,461	Towards Tractable Algebras for Bags (Extended Abstract)	1993	PODS	8.550394e-05
4,422	Functional and Predicative programming in OODB's	1992	PODS	6.7128479e-05
4,702	On the Complexity of Nonrecursive XQuery and Functional Query Languages on Complex Values	2005	PODS	6.5549225e-05
5,523	Dense-Order Constraint Databases (Extended Abstract)	1995	PODS	6.1870017e-05
7,086	A Query Language for NC	1994	PODS	5.7073076e-05
7,260	On the Power of Algebras with Recursion	1993	SIGMOD	5.6612789e-05
7,849	New Techniques for Studying Set Languages, Bag Languages and Aggregate Functions	1994	PODS	5.5324391e-05
13,022	Tutorial: Languages for Collection Types	1994	PODS	5.093636e-05

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
355	Object Identity As A Query Language Primitive	1989	SIGMOD	0.00020351749
544	A New Approach to Database Logic	1984	PODS	0.00016792556
799	Logic Programming With Sets	1987	PODS	0.00013911498
1,026	Sets and Negation in a Logic Database Language (LDL1)	1987	PODS	0.00012578477
2,400	Untyped Sets, Invention, and Computable Queries	1989	PODS	8.6299917e-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
3,712	Non-Deterministic Languages to Express Deterministic Transformations	1990	PODS	7.1777407e-05
5,210	On the Expressive Power of Logic Programming Languages with Sets	1988	PODS	6.3163157e-05

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1	13,040	Investigation of Algebraic Query Optimisation for Database Programming Languages	1994	VLDB
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7	3,128	On Accessing Object-Oriented Databases: Expressive Power, Complexity, and Restrictions	1989	SIGMOD
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9	12,875	Fixed-Point Query Languages for Linear Constraint Databases	2000	PODS
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