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Any Algorithm in the Complex Object Algebra with Powerset Needs Exponential Space to Compute Transitive Closure

Summary: Proves that in the Abiteboul–Beeri complex-object algebra with the powerset operator, any algorithm evaluating transitive closure must use exponential space. Concludes powerset is inherently intractable for implementing fixpoint/TC queries, giving a strong lower bound. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID
h48fe41f30bc704f7
Venue
PODS
Year
1994
Pagerank
5.5128501e-05
Overall Rank
7,484 | 49.69%
DOI
10.1145/182591.182613

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{suciu_pods94,
        address = {New York, NY, USA},
        series = {{PODS} '94},
        title = {{Any Algorithm in the Complex Object Algebra with Powerset Needs Exponential Space to Compute Transitive Closure}},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/182591.182613},
        doi = {10.1145/182591.182613},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        author = {Suciu, Dan and Paredaens, Jan},
        year = {1994}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 2 of 2 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
13,283 Normalizing Incomplete Databases 1995 PODS 4.9793485e-05
13,312 Tutorial: Languages for Collection Types 1994 PODS 4.9793485e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 3 of 3 cited papers.

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

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