Update Semantics for Incomplete Databases

Summary: Incomplete databases modeled as a set of possible worlds; update semantics realized via simple set operations on the state space. Evaluates the ability of existing incomplete-data models to support updates, reporting basic results on capabilities and limitations. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h0563484e676bf978
Venue: VLDB
Year: 1985
Pagerank: 8.4353518e-05
Overall Rank: 2,459 | 83.47%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Serge Abiteboul (INRIA)
2. Gösta Grahne (INRIA)

BibTeX Citation

@article{abiteboul_vldb85,
        title = {{Update Semantics for Incomplete Databases}},
        author = {Abiteboul, Serge and Grahne, Gösta},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '85},
        year = {1985}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 13 of 13 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
970	On the Representation and Querying of Sets of Possible Worlds	1987	SIGMOD	0.00012772086
1,809	ORCHESTRA: Rapid, Collaborative Sharing of Dynamic Data	2005	CIDR	9.5935116e-05
3,541	Data Functions, Datalog and Negation (Extended Abstract)	1988	SIGMOD	7.2161746e-05
3,796	Non-Deterministic Languages to Express Deterministic Transformations	1990	PODS	7.0166914e-05
4,919	Efficient Answering of Historical What-if Queries	2022	SIGMOD	6.3544814e-05
5,067	Datalog Unchained	2021	PODS	6.2898972e-05
5,713	Believe It or Not: Adding Belief Annotations to Databases	2009	VLDB	6.0216473e-05
6,067	ACID: A System for Computing Approximate Certain Query Answers over Incomplete Databases	2018	SIGMOD	5.897766e-05
6,857	A Model-Theoretic Approach to Updating Logical Databases (Extended Abstract)	1986	PODS	5.6640089e-05
7,684	Specification and Implementation of Programs for Updating Incomplete Information Databases (Preliminary Report)	1987	PODS	5.4772833e-05
13,338	On the Semantics of Theory Change: Arbitration between Old and New Information	1993	PODS	4.9793485e-05
13,372	Knowledgebase Transformations	1992	PODS	4.9793485e-05
13,439	A Framework for Comparison of Update Semantics (Extended Abstract)	1988	PODS	4.9793485e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 7 of 7 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
10	Extending the Data Base Relational Model to Capture More Meaning	1979	SIGMOD	0.00075944947
41	Testing Implications Of Data Dependencies	1979	SIGMOD	0.00045899672
619	On the Semantics of Updates in Databases	1983	PODS	0.00015518944
1,418	Null Values in Data Base Management: A Denotational Semantics Approach	1979	SIGMOD	0.00010731577
3,225	On the Equivalence of Logical Databases	1984	PODS	7.5102695e-05
3,807	Dependency Satisfaction in Databases with Incomplete Information	1984	VLDB	7.0097907e-05
4,198	Incomplete Information and Dependencies in Relational Databases	1983	SIGMOD	6.7411355e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	13,431	A Family of Incomplete Relational Database Models	1989	VLDB
2	2,156	Obtaining Complete Answers from Incomplete Databases	1996	VLDB
3	14,770	Completeness Information and Its Application to Query Processing	1986	VLDB
4	13,439	A Framework for Comparison of Update Semantics (Extended Abstract)	1988	PODS
5	2,989	Data Exchange and Incomplete Information	2006	PODS
6	2,729	On The Integrity Of Databases With Incomplete Information	1986	PODS
7	13,441	Partition Semantics For Incomplete Information In Relational Databases	1988	SIGMOD
8	4,746	Characterization of Well-Behaved Database Schemata and Their Update Semantics	1983	VLDB
9	619	On the Semantics of Updates in Databases	1983	PODS
10	6,857	A Model-Theoretic Approach to Updating Logical Databases (Extended Abstract)	1986	PODS