Database Theory
Database Theory
Course with SWS 4/2/0 (lecture/exercise/practical) in SS 2018
Lecturer
Tutor
SWS
- 4/2/0
Modules
Examination method
- Oral exam
Lecture series
Databases are a key technology in computer science that brings together fascinating theoretical topics and highly relevant practical applications. The goal of this lecture is to give an extended introduction to this interesting field, with a special focus on database query languages, their expressive power, and computational complexity. The lecture will introduce the relational data model, and then discuss theoretical and practical aspects of a variety of query languages:
- first-order logic as a query language and the relational algebra
- conjunctive queries and their unions
- navigational queries: path queries
- Datalog and its relatives
- query answering under database dependencies
The lecture focuses on core principles that apply to many types of databases alike (relational, graph-based, semantic web). Some important query answering algorithms are presented, too, but otherwise, the details of database implementation and administration are not covered.
Prerequisites
An undergraduate-level knowledge of predicate logic, regular languages, and algorithmic and computational complexity is required. The lecture will connect with other topics in the Computer Science and Computational Logic curriculum, such as relational databases, logic programming, and Semantic Web technologies – familiarity with these topics is not required to follow the lecture.
Schedule and Location
UPDATE: All the three lectures on the 19th of June will take place in room APB 1004.
- The weekly lecture sessions will take place on Tuesdays DS2 (9:20 to 10:50) and DS3 (11:10 to 12:40).
- The weekly exercise session will take place on Tuesdays DS5 (14:50 to 16:20).
- The first exercise session will take place in the second week, i.e., on 17 April 2017.
- All sessions will take place in room APB/E005 except for the lectures on the 19th of June, which will take place in room APB 1004.
Legacy
This course has first been taught at TU Dresden in the form of the 2015 lecture Foundations of Databases and Query Languages. The plan for this year's course will be very similar.
The structure of some of the lectures of this course is inspired by the course Theory of Data and Knowledge Bases in the version given by Georg Gottlob and Thomas Lukasiewicz at the University of Oxford.The main reference textbook for the lecture is:
- Serge Abiteboul, Richard Hull, Victor Vianu: Foundations of Databases. Addison-Wesley. 1994.
- The book is available for free from its webpage, but there are also copies in the library.
Further texts might be consulted for background information and additional details:
- Michael Sipser: Introduction to the Theory of Computation. 2005
- Accessible introduction to complexity theory that covers all topics of computational complexity that the lecture touches upon.
- Evgeny Dantsin, Thomas Eiter, Georg Gottlob, Andrei Voronkov: Complexity and expressive power of logic programming. ACM Computing Surveys, 33:3, pp 374-425, 2001.
- Covers all Datalog complexity results mentioned in the lecture. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/502807.502810 (may require access from within a university network)
- additional references will be added in the course of the lecture
Subscribe to events of this course (icalendar)
| Lecture | Introduction/Relational Data Model | DS2, April 10, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | First-Order Queries | DS3, April 10, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Query Answering Complexity | DS2, April 17, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | FO Query Answering Complexity (I) | DS3, April 17, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Exercise | Relational Algebra | DS5, April 17, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
| Exercise | First-Order Queries | DS5, April 24, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
| Lecture | FO Query Answering Complexity (II) | DS2, May 8, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Conjunctive Queries | DS3, May 8, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Exercise | First-order Query Complexity | DS5, May 8, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
| Lecture | Tree-Like Conjunctive Queries (1) | DS2, May 15, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Tree-Like Conjunctive Queries (2) | DS3, May 15, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Exercise | Conjunctive Queries, CSP, and Hypergraphs | DS5, May 15, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
| Lecture | Query Optimisation | DS2, May 29, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Conjunctive Query Optimisation | DS3, May 29, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Exercise | Treewidth and Hypertreewidth | DS5, May 29, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
| Lecture | Query language expressivity | DS2, June 5, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Expressivity of FO queries | DS3, June 5, 2018 in APB E005 | |
| Exercise | Trakhtenbrot's Theorem | DS5, June 5, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
| Lecture | Introduction to Datalog | DS2, June 12, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Datalog Complexity | DS3, June 12, 2018 in APB E005 | |
| Exercise | Query Optimsation | DS5, June 12, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
| Lecture | Datalog Expressivity and Query Containment | DS2, June 19, 2018 in APB 1004 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Datalog Implementation (1) | DS3, June 19, 2018 in APB 1004 | File 1, File 2 |
| Exercise | Datalog | DS5, June 19, 2018 in APB 1004 | File |
| Lecture | Datalog Implementation (2) | DS2, June 26, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Graph Databases | DS3, June 26, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Exercise | Semi-positive Datalog | DS5, June 26, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Regular Path Queries | DS2, July 3, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Dependencies | DS3, July 3, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Exercise | Datalog Evaluation | DS5, July 3, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
| Lecture | The Chase | DS2, July 10, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Chase Termination and Acyclicity | DS3, July 10, 2018 in APB E005 | |
| Exercise | Graph Databases and Path Queries | DS5, July 10, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
| Lecture | Query Answering Beyond Acyclic TGDs | DS2, July 17, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Lecture | Summary and Outlook | DS3, July 17, 2018 in APB E005 | File 1, File 2 |
| Exercise | Dependencies | DS5, July 17, 2018 in APB E005 | File |
Calendar
