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: h6ea38db49a291ebb
Venue: PODS
Year: 1991
Pagerank: 7.7144804e-05
Overall Rank: 3,046 | 79.53%
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
2,515	Towards Tractable Algebras for Bags (Extended Abstract)	1993	PODS	8.3644485e-05
4,523	Functional and Predicative programming in OODB's	1992	PODS	6.56223e-05
4,807	On the Complexity of Nonrecursive XQuery and Functional Query Languages on Complex Values	2005	PODS	6.4079967e-05
5,658	Dense-Order Constraint Databases (Extended Abstract)	1995	PODS	6.0482089e-05
7,232	A Query Language for NC	1994	PODS	5.579276e-05
7,411	On the Power of Algebras with Recursion	1993	SIGMOD	5.534276e-05
8,005	New Techniques for Studying Set Languages, Bag Languages and Aggregate Functions	1994	PODS	5.4085878e-05
13,312	Tutorial: Languages for Collection Types	1994	PODS	4.9793485e-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
366	Object Identity As A Query Language Primitive	1989	SIGMOD	0.00019923978
559	A New Approach to Database Logic	1984	PODS	0.00016422254
828	Logic Programming With Sets	1987	PODS	0.00013614671
1,049	Sets and Negation in a Logic Database Language (LDL1)	1987	PODS	0.0001229888
2,457	Untyped Sets, Invention, and Computable Queries	1989	PODS	8.4375276e-05
2,751	Possibilities and Limitations of Using Flat Operators in Nested Algebra Expressions	1988	PODS	8.0562002e-05
2,968	On the Expressive Power of Database Queries with Intermediate Types	1988	PODS	7.8013847e-05
3,796	Non-Deterministic Languages to Express Deterministic Transformations	1990	PODS	7.0166914e-05
5,335	On the Expressive Power of Logic Programming Languages with Sets	1988	PODS	6.1748115e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	13,330	Investigation of Algebraic Query Optimisation for Database Programming Languages	1994	VLDB
2	6,689	Functional Database Query Languages as Typed Lambda Calculi of Fixed Order (Extended Abstract)	1994	PODS
3	1,919	The Expressiveness of a Family of Finite Set Languages	1991	PODS
4	5,658	Dense-Order Constraint Databases (Extended Abstract)	1995	PODS
5	8,300	Formal Semantics and Analysis of Object Queries	2003	SIGMOD
6	421	On the Complexity of Database Queries (Extended Abstract)	1997	PODS
7	3,183	On Accessing Object-Oriented Databases: Expressive Power, Complexity, and Restrictions	1989	SIGMOD
8	13,165	Fixed-Point Query Languages for Linear Constraint Databases	2000	PODS
9	4,559	A Query Language for List-Based Complex Objects	1994	PODS
10	2,968	On the Expressive Power of Database Queries with Intermediate Types	1988	PODS