Reflective programming in the relational algebra (extended abstract)

Summary: Introduces a reflective relational algebra that treats RA programs as first-class relations, enabling generation and integration of query code at runtime. Analyzes expressiveness and complexity, showing reflection corresponds to bounded looping and discussing applicability. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 983
Venue: PODS
Year: 1993
Pagerank: 5.5430288e-05
Overall Rank: 7,793 | 46.54%
DOI: 10.1145/153850.153852

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Jan Van den Bussche (University of Antwerp)
2. Dirk Van Gucht (Indiana University)
3. Gottfried Vossen (University of Giessen)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{bussche_pods93,
        address = {New York, NY, USA},
        series = {{PODS} '93},
        title = {{Reflective programming in the relational algebra (extended abstract)}},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/153850.153852},
        doi = {10.1145/153850.153852},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        author = {Van den Bussche, Jan and Van Gucht, Dirk and Vossen, Gottfried},
        year = {1993}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 2 of 2 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,609	Managing Semantic Heterogeneity in Databases : A Theoretical Perspective	1997	PODS	0.00010225236
1,708	Using Schematically Heterogeneous Structures	1998	SIGMOD	9.958846e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 5 of 5 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
971	ILOG: Declarative Creation and Manipulation of Object Identifiers	1990	VLDB	0.00012875736
1,099	Quel As A Data Type	1984	SIGMOD	0.0001217465
1,928	Relations with Relation Names as Arguments: Algebra and Calculus	1992	PODS	9.4692029e-05
3,128	On Accessing Object-Oriented Databases: Expressive Power, Complexity, and Restrictions	1989	SIGMOD	7.7292081e-05

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