On the Expected Size of Recursive Datalog Queries

Summary: Asymptotically exact formulas for expected fixpoint sizes of two Datalog recursions (same-generation, canonical factorable) and of their Magic Sets/Factoring rewrites under selection queries. Finds recursive relations near worst-case even on sparse bases; Magic Sets yields sizes within a small constant of no-rewrite, while Factoring (when applicable) yields much smaller relations—analytic formulas closely match experiments. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: hcd554ed3f76e6a4b
Venue: PODS
Year: 1991
Pagerank: 5.5994281e-05
Overall Rank: 7,090 | 52.35%
DOI: 10.1145/113413.113438

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. S. Seshadri (University of Wisconsin)
2. Jeffrey F. Naughton (University of Wisconsin)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{seshadri_pods91,
        address = {New York, NY, USA},
        series = {{PODS} '91},
        title = {{On the Expected Size of Recursive Datalog Queries}},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/113413.113438},
        doi = {10.1145/113413.113438},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        author = {Seshadri, S. and Naughton, Jeffrey F.},
        year = {1991}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 2 of 2 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
6,689	Queries are easier than you thought (probably)	1992	PODS	5.7059311e-05
11,135	Dynamic Pruning for Recursive Joins	2025	SIGMOD	4.9769913e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 6 of 6 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
18	MAGIC SETS AND OTHER STRANGE WAYS TO IMPLEMENT LOGIC PROGRAMS (Extended Abstract)	1986	PODS	0.00058997063
353	On the Power of Magic	1987	PODS	0.00020213935
1,682	Bounds on the Propagation of Selection into Logic Programs	1987	PODS	9.8804595e-05
4,427	Magic Counting Methods	1987	SIGMOD	6.6008592e-05
5,423	Worst-case Complexity Analysis of Methods for Logic Query Implementation	1987	PODS	6.1347456e-05
9,695	Counting Methods for Cyclic Relations	1988	PODS	5.1382653e-05

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