A Query Language for Multidimensional Arrays: Design, Implementation, and Optimization Techniques

Summary: Arrays as index-to-value functions yield clean semantics and optimization. Presents an array calculus and a comprehension language, with a NetCDF driver and equational optimizations, showing expressiveness comparable to ranking in complex-object queries. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h6685e2792a4d483e
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 1996
Pagerank: 0.00010522445
Overall Rank: 1,476 | 90.11%
DOI: 10.1145/233269.233335

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Leonid Libkin (AT&T)
2. Rona Machlin (University of Pennsylvania)
3. Limsoon Wong (Institute of Systems Science)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{libkin_sigmod96,
        title = {{A Query Language for Multidimensional Arrays: Design, Implementation, and Optimization Techniques}},
        author = {Libkin, Leonid and Machlin, Rona and Wong, Limsoon},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '96},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/233269.233335},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/233269.233335},
        year = {1996}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 16 of 16 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
665	Your Mediators Need Data Conversion!	1998	SIGMOD	0.00014947072
2,241	Physical Data Independence, Constraints, and Optimization with Universal Plans	1999	VLDB	8.7710222e-05
2,403	A Language for Manipulating Arrays	1997	VLDB	8.5049013e-05
2,437	Parallel Data Analysis Directly on Scientific File Formats	2014	SIGMOD	8.4576748e-05
2,565	AQuery: Query Language for Ordered Data, Optimization Techniques, and Experiments	2003	VLDB	8.2689928e-05
3,068	The Case for RodentStore, an Adaptive, Declarative Storage System	2009	CIDR	7.6696594e-05
4,288	Algebraic Manipulation of Scientific Datasets	2004	VLDB	6.6677337e-05
4,814	ChronosDB: Distributed, File Based, Geospatial Array DBMS	2018	VLDB	6.3893032e-05
6,159	The BUDS Language for Distributed Bayesian Machine Learning	2017	SIGMOD	5.851731e-05
7,784	Query Processing Techniques for Arrays	1999	SIGMOD	5.4360987e-05
8,113	Array DBMS: Past, Present, and (Near) Future	2021	VLDB	5.3739121e-05
9,937	Expressiveness within Sequence Datalog	2021	PODS	5.093585e-05
10,172	Optimizing Time Series Queries with Versions	2024	SIGMOD	5.0559291e-05
12,964	Index-Based Multidimensional Array Queries: Safety and Equivalence	2007	PODS	4.9605343e-05
12,980	BIwTL: A Business Information Warehouse Toolkit and Language for Warehousing Simplification and Automation	2007	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
13,169	Large-Scale, Standards-Based Earth Observation Imagery and Web Mapping Services	2003	VLDB	4.9605343e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 8 of 8 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
712	Sequence Query Processing	1994	SIGMOD	0.00014588907
1,030	Algebraic Support for Complex Objects with Arrays, Identity, and Inheritance	1991	SIGMOD	0.00012380641
1,978	A Call to Order	1993	PODS	9.2625526e-05
2,522	Towards Tractable Algebras for Bags (Extended Abstract)	1993	PODS	8.3330985e-05
2,901	Towards an Effective Calculus for Object Query Languages	1995	SIGMOD	7.8781463e-05
3,994	A Data Transformation System for Biological Data Sources	1995	VLDB	6.8544209e-05
6,961	Sequences, Datalog and Transducers	1995	PODS	5.618187e-05
8,027	New Techniques for Studying Set Languages, Bag Languages and Aggregate Functions	1994	PODS	5.3881755e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	1,131	Simultaneous Optimization and Evaluation of Multiple Dimensional Queries	1998	SIGMOD
2	1,030	Algebraic Support for Complex Objects with Arrays, Identity, and Inheritance	1991	SIGMOD
3	1,909	Querying Multiple Features of Groups in Relational Databases	1996	VLDB
4	3,058	Tractable Query Languages for Complex Object Databases	1991	PODS
5	2,901	Towards an Effective Calculus for Object Query Languages	1995	SIGMOD
6	131	A Query Language and Optimization Techniques for Unstructured Data	1996	SIGMOD
7	12,964	Index-Based Multidimensional Array Queries: Safety and Equivalence	2007	PODS
8	1,756	How to Architect a Query Compiler	2016	SIGMOD
9	7,784	Query Processing Techniques for Arrays	1999	SIGMOD
10	13,377	Investigation of Algebraic Query Optimisation for Database Programming Languages	1994	VLDB