A Crash Course in Determinacy

Talk by Piotr Ostropolski-Nalewaja

Location: APB 3027
Start: 21. August 2025 at 11:00 am
End: 21. August 2025 at 12:00 pm
Research group: Computational Logic
Event series: Research Seminar Logic and AI
iCal

This talk offers a (short) crash course in Determinacy - a classical problem in database theory, and with multiple connections to KR.

At its core, the determinacy problem asks: given a query Q and a set of queries {V_1, V_2, ..., V_n}, can the answer to Q(D) be recovered solely from the answers to V_1(D), V_2(D), ..., V_n(D) no matter the database D?

We will explore the problem, its key variants, and the connections to query rewritability, existential rules, and the chase procedure. The presentation will be grounded in examples, making the concepts as concrete and intuitive as possible.

The presentation will be given on the board, so do feel encouraged to join the talk in person if possible. We will provide the usual hybrid setup but it will likely be hard to see what is written on the board online. Sorry for the inconvenience!