We develop an approach to incorporate additional knowledge, in the form of general purpose integrity constraints (ICs), to reduce uncertainty in probabilistic databases. While incorporating ICs improves data quality (and hence quality of answers to a query), it significantly complicates query processing. To overcome the additional complexity, we develop an approach to map an uncertain relation U with ICs to another uncertain relation U', that approximates the set of consistent worlds represented by U. Queries over U can instead be evaluated over U' achieving higher quality (due to reduced uncertainty in U') without additional complexity in query processing due to ICs. We demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of our approach to large data-sets with complex constraints. We also present experimental results demonstrating the utility of incorporating integrity constraints in uncertain relations, in the context of an information extraction application.
We address the issue of incorporating a particular yet expressive form of integrity constraints (namely, denial constraints) into probabilistic databases. To this aim, we move away from the common way of giving semantics to probabilistic databases, which relies on considering a unique interpretation of the data, and address two fundamental problems: consistency checking and query evaluation. The former consists in verifying whether there is an interpretation which conforms to both the marginal probabilities of the tuples and the integrity constraints. The latter is the problem of answering que…
The formalism of active integrity constraints was introduced as a way to specify particular classes of integrity constraints over relational databases together with preferences on how to repair existing inconsistencies. The rule-based syntax of such integrity constraints also provides algorithms for finding such repairs that achieve the best asymptotic complexity. However, the different semantics that have been proposed for these integrity constraints all exhibit some counter-intuitive examples. In this work, we look at active integrity constraints using ideas from algebraic fixpoint theory. W…
University of Washington（华盛顿大学）；Carleton University（卡尔顿大学）
Causality has been recently introduced in databases, to model, characterize and possibly compute causes for query results (answers). Connections between queryanswer causality, consistency-based diagnosis, database repairs (wrt. integrity constraint violations), abductive diagnosis and the view-update problem have been established. In this work we further investigate connections between query-answer causality and abductive diagnosis and the view-update problem. In this context, we also define and investigate the notion of query-answer causality in the presence of integrity constraints.
We address the problem of minimal-change integrity maintenance in the context of integrity constraints in relational databases. We assume that integrity-restoration actions are limited to tuple deletions. We identify two basic computational issues: repair checking (is a database instance a repair of a given database?) and consistent query answers (is a tuple an answer to a given query in every repair of a given database?). We study the computational complexity of both problems, delineating the boundary between the tractable and the intractable. We consider denial constraints, general functiona…
In recent years, cloud database storage has become an inexpensive and convenient option for businesses and individuals to store information. While its positive aspects make the cloud extremely attractive for data storage, it is a relatively new area of service, making it vulnerable to cyber-attacks and security breaches. Storing data in a foreign location also requires the owner to relinquish control of their information to system administrators of these online database services. This opens the possibility for malicious, internal attacks on the data that may involve the manipulation, omission,…
Carleton University（卡尔顿大学）；University of Washington（华盛顿大学）
Causality has been recently introduced in databases, to model, characterize, and possibly compute causes for query answers. Connections between QA-causality and consistency-based diagnosis and database repairs (wrt. integrity constraint violations) have already been established. In this work we establish precise connections between QA-causality and both abductive diagnosis and the view-update problem in databases, allowing us to obtain new algorithmic and complexity results for QA-causality. We also obtain new results on the complexity of view-conditioned causality, and investigate the notion …
Integrity constraints in databases have been studied extensively since the 1980s, and they are considered essential to guarantee database integrity. In recent years, several authors have studied how the same notion can be adapted to reasoning frameworks, in such a way that they achieve the purpose of guaranteeing a system's consistency, but are kept separate from the reasoning mechanisms. In this paper we focus on multi-context systems, a general-purpose framework for combining heterogeneous reasoning systems, enhancing them with a notion of integrity constraints that generalizes the correspon…
In this paper we study the problem of reducing the evaluation costs of queries on finite databases in presence of integrity constraints, by designing and materializing views. Given a database schema, a set of queries defined on the schema, a set of integrity constraints, and a storage limit, to find a solution to this problem means to find a set of views that satisfies the storage limit, provides equivalent rewritings of the queries under the constraints (this requirement is weaker than equivalence in the absence of constraints), and reduces the total costs of evaluating the queries. This prob…
Consistency of knowledge repositories is of prime importance in organization management. Integrity constraints are a well-known vehicle for specifying data consistency requirements in knowledge bases; in particular, active integrity constraints go one step further, allowing the specification of preferred ways to overcome inconsistent situations in the context of database management. This paper describes a tool to validate an SQL database with respect to a given set of active integrity constraints, proposing possible repairs in case the database is inconsistent. The tool is able to work with th…
Integrity checking is a crucial issue, as databases change their instance all the time and therefore need to be checked continuously and rapidly. Decades of research have produced a plethora of methods for checking integrity constraints of a database in an incremental manner. However, not much has been said about when to check integrity. In this paper, we study the differences and similarities between checking integrity before an update (a.k.a. pre-test) or after (a.k.a. post-test) in order to assess the respective convenience and properties.
In this article, we characterize in terms of analytic tableaux the repairs of inconsistent relational databases, that is databases that do not satisfy a given set of integrity constraints. For this purpose we provide closing and opening criteria for branches in tableaux that are built for database instances and their integrity constraints. We use the tableaux based characterization as a basis for consistent query answering, that is for retrieving from the database answers to queries that are consistent wrt the integrity constraints.
A relational database is inconsistent if it does not satisfy a given set of integrity constraints. Nevertheless, it is likely that most of the data in it is consistent with the constraints. In this paper we apply logic programming based on answer sets to the problem of retrieving consistent information from a possibly inconsistent database. Since consistent information persists from the original database to every of its minimal repairs, the approach is based on a specification of database repairs using disjunctive logic programs with exceptions, whose answer set semantics can be represented an…
Consistent query answering is the problem of computing the answers from a database that are consistent with respect to certain integrity constraints that the database as a whole may fail to satisfy. Those answers are characterized as those that are invariant under minimal forms of restoring the consistency of the database. In this context, we study the problem of repairing databases by fixing integer numerical values at the attribute level with respect to denial and aggregation constraints. We introduce a quantitative definition of database fix, and investigate the complexity of several decisi…
A view with a binding pattern is a parameterised query on a database. Such views are used, e.g., to model Web services. To answer a query on such views, one has to orchestrate the views together in execution plans. The goal is usually to find equivalent rewritings, which deliver precisely the same results as the query on all databases. However, such rewritings are usually possible only in the presence of integrity constraints - and not all databases have such constraints. In this paper, we describe a class of plans that give practical guarantees about their result even if there are no integrit…
Classical algorithms for query optimization presuppose the absence of inconsistencies or uncertainties in the database and exploit only valid semantic knowledge provided, e.g., by integrity constraints. Data inconsistency or uncertainty, however, is a widespread critical issue in ordinary databases: total integrity is often, in fact, an unrealistic assumption and violations to integrity constraints may be introduced in several ways. In this report we present an approach for semantic query optimization that, differently from the traditional ones, relies on not necessarily valid semantic knowled…
We propose a generic numerical measure of inconsistency of a database with respect to a set of integrity constraints. It is based on an abstract repair semantics. A particular inconsistency measure associated to cardinality-repairs is investigated; and we show that it can be computed via answer-set programs. Keywords: Integrity constraints in databases, inconsistent databases, database repairs, inconsistency measure.
Given a constraint $c$ assumed to hold on a database $B$ and an update $u$ to be performed on $B$, we address the following question: will $c$ still hold after $u$ is performed? When $B$ is a relational database, we define a confluent terminating rewriting system which, starting from $c$ and $u$, automatically derives a simplified weakest precondition $wp(c,u)$ such that, whenever $B$ satisfies $wp(c,u)$, then the updated database $u(B)$ will satisfy $c$, and moreover $wp(c,u)$ is simplified in the sense that its computation depends only upon the instances of $c$ that may be modified by the up…
Many applications require the immutable and consistent sharing of data across organizational boundaries. Because conventional datastores cannot provide this functionality, blockchains have been proposed as one possible solution. Yet public blockchains are energy inefficient, hard to scale and suffer from limited throughput and high latencies, while permissioned blockchains depend on specially designated nodes, potentially leak meta-information, and also suffer from scale and performance bottlenecks. This paper presents CreDB, a datastore that provides blockchain-like guarantees of integrity us…
We study active integrity constraints and revision programming, two formalisms designed to describe integrity constraints on databases and to specify policies on preferred ways to enforce them. Unlike other more commonly accepted approaches, these two formalisms attempt to provide a declarative solution to the problem. However, the original semantics of founded repairs for active integrity constraints and justified revisions for revision programs differ. Our main goal is to establish a comprehensive framework of semantics for active integrity constraints, to find a parallel framework for revis…
We introduce a formalism to couple integrity constraints over general-purpose knowledge bases with actions that can be executed to restore consistency. This formalism generalizes active integrity constraints over databases. In the more general setting of multi-context systems, adding repair suggestions to integrity constraints allows defining simple iterative algorithms to find all possible grounded repairs - repairs for the global system that follow the suggestions given by the actions in the individual rules. We apply our methodology to ontologies, and show that it can express most relevant …
Matching dependencies (MDs) were introduced to specify the identification or matching of certain attribute values in pairs of database tuples when some similarity conditions are satisfied. Their enforcement can be seen as a natural generalization of entity resolution. In what we call the "pure case" of MDs, any value from the underlying data domain can be used for the value in common that does the matching. We investigate the semantics and properties of data cleaning through the enforcement of matching dependencies for the pure case. We characterize the intended clean instances and also the "c…
In recent years, due to the wide applications of uncertain data (e.g., noisy data), uncertain frequent itemsets (UFI) mining over uncertain databases has attracted much attention, which differs from the corresponding deterministic problem from the generalized definition and resolutions. As the most costly task in association rule mining process, it has been shown that outsourcing this task to a service provider (e.g.,the third cloud party) brings several benefits to the data owner such as cost relief and a less commitment to storage and computational resources. However, the correctness integri…
The problem of extracting consistent information from relational databases violating integrity constraints on numerical data is addressed. In particular, aggregate constraints defined as linear inequalities on aggregate-sum queries on input data are considered. The notion of repair as consistent set of updates at attribute-value level is exploited, and the characterization of several complexity issues related to repairing data and computing consistent query answers is provided.
Databases in the past have helped businesses maintain and extract insights from their data. Today, it is common for a business to involve multiple independent, distrustful parties. This trend towards decentralization introduces a new and important requirement to databases: the integrity of the data, the history, and the execution must be protected. In other words, there is a need for a new class of database systems whose integrity can be verified (or verifiable databases). In this paper, we identify the requirements and the design challenges of verifiable databases.We observe that the main cha…
A probabilistic database with attribute-level uncertainty consists of relations where cells of some attributes may hold probability distributions rather than deterministic content. Such databases arise, implicitly or explicitly, in the context of noisy operations such as missing data imputation, where we automatically fill in missing values, column prediction, where we predict unknown attributes, and database cleaning (and repairing), where we replace the original values due to detected errors or violation of integrity constraints. We study the computational complexity of problems that regard …
Consistent query answering is an inconsistency tolerant approach to obtaining semantically correct answers from a database that may be inconsistent with respect to its integrity constraints. In this work we formalize the notion of consistent query answer for spatial databases and spatial semantic integrity constraints. In order to do this, we first characterize conflicting spatial data, and next, we define admissible instances that restore consistency while staying close to the original instance. In this way we obtain a repair semantics, which is used as an instrumental concept to define and p…
Graph databases have emerged as the fundamental technology underpinning trendy application domains where traditional databases are not well-equipped to handle complex graph data. However, current graph databases support basic graph structures and integrity constraints with no standard algebra. In this paper, we introduce GRAD, a native and generic graph database model. GRAD goes beyond traditional graph database models, which support simple graph structures and constraints. Instead, GRAD presents a complete graph database model supporting advanced graph structures, a set of well-defined constr…
Integrity and security of the data in database systems are typically maintained with access control policies and firewalls. However, insider attacks -- where someone with an intimate knowledge of the system and administrative privileges tampers with the data -- pose a unique challenge. Measures like append only logging prove to be insufficient because an attacker with administrative privileges can alter logs and login records to eliminate the trace of attack, thus making insider attacks hard to detect. In this paper, we propose Verity -- first of a kind system to the best of our knowledge. Ver…
Blockchains have recently been under the spotlight due to the boom of cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications. There is an increasing demand for querying the data stored in a blockchain database. To ensure query integrity, the user can maintain the entire blockchain database and query the data locally. However, this approach is not economic, if not infeasible, because of the blockchain's huge data size and considerable maintenance costs. In this paper, we take the first step toward investigating the problem of verifiable query processing over blockchain databases. We propose a novel fr…
In this paper, building on work done on measuring inconsistency in knowledge bases, we introduce inconsistency measures for databases. In particular, focusing on databases with denial constraints, we first consider the natural approach of virtually transforming a database into a propositional knowledge base and then applying well-known measures. However, using this method, tuples and constraints are equally considered in charge of inconsistencies. Then, we introduce a version of inconsistency measures blaming database tuples only, i.e., treating integrity constraints as irrefutable statements.…
We investigate the query evaluation problem for fixed queries over fully dynamic databases where tuples can be inserted or deleted. The task is to design a dynamic data structure that can immediately report the new result of a fixed query after every database update. We consider unions of conjunctive queries (UCQs) and focus on the query evaluation tasks testing (decide whether an input tuple belongs to the query result), enumeration (enumerate, without repetition, all tuples in the query result), and counting (output the number of tuples in the query result). We identify three increasingly re…
This paper introduces a scalable approach for probabilistic top-k similarity ranking on uncertain vector data. Each uncertain object is represented by a set of vector instances that are assumed to be mutually-exclusive. The objective is to rank the uncertain data according to their distance to a reference object. We propose a framework that incrementally computes for each object instance and ranking position, the probability of the object falling at that ranking position. The resulting rank probability distribution can serve as input for several state-of-the-art probabilistic ranking models. E…
School of Computer Science（计算机学院）；Carleton University（卡尔顿大学）
Causality has been recently introduced in databases, to model, characterize and possibly compute causes for query results (answers). Connections between query causality and consistency-based diagnosis and database repairs (wrt. integrity constrain violations) have been established in the literature. In this work we establish connections between query causality and abductive diagnosis and the view-update problem. The unveiled relationships allow us to obtain new complexity results for query causality -the main focus of our work- and also for the two other areas.
Frequent itemset mining in uncertain transaction databases semantically and computationally differs from traditional techniques applied on standard (certain) transaction databases. Uncertain transaction databases consist of sets of existentially uncertain items. The uncertainty of items in transactions makes traditional techniques inapplicable. In this paper, we tackle the problem of finding probabilistic frequent itemsets based on possible world semantics. In this context, an itemset X is called frequent if the probability that X occurs in at least minSup transactions is above a given thresho…
World-set algebra is a variable-free query language for uncertain databases. It constitutes the core of the query language implemented in MayBMS, an uncertain database system. This paper shows that world-set algebra captures exactly second-order logic over finite structures, or equivalently, the polynomial hierarchy. The proofs also imply that world-set algebra is closed under composition, a previously open problem.
In this paper, we propose a novel, effective and efficient probabilistic pruning criterion for probabilistic similarity queries on uncertain data. Our approach supports a general uncertainty model using continuous probabilistic density functions to describe the (possibly correlated) uncertain attributes of objects. In a nutshell, the problem to be solved is to compute the PDF of the random variable denoted by the probabilistic domination count: Given an uncertain database object B, an uncertain reference object R and a set D of uncertain database objects in a multi-dimensional space, the proba…
We propose a generic numerical measure of the inconsistency of a database with respect to a set of integrity constraints. It is based on an abstract repair semantics. In particular, an inconsistency measure associated to cardinality-repairs is investigated in detail. More specifically, it is shown that it can be computed via answer-set programs, but sometimes its computation can be intractable in data complexity. However, polynomial-time deterministic and randomized approximations are exhibited. The behavior of this measure under small updates is analyzed, obtaining fixed-parameter tractabilit…
Relational Keyword Search (R-KwS) systems enable naive/informal users to explore and retrieve information from relational databases without knowing schema details or query languages. These systems take the keywords from the input query, locate the elements of the target database that correspond to these keywords, and look for ways to "connect" these elements using information on referential integrity constraints, i.e., key/foreign key pairs. Although several such systems have been proposed in the literature, most of them only support queries whose keywords refer to the contents of the target d…
We consider here the problem of obtaining reliable, consistent information from inconsistent databases -- databases that do not have to satisfy given integrity constraints. We use the notion of consistent query answer -- a query answer which is true in every (minimal) repair of the database. We provide a complete classification of the computational complexity of consistent answers to first-order queries w.r.t. functional dependencies and denial constraints. We show how the complexity depends on the {\em type} of the constraints considered, their {\em number}, and the {\em size} of the query. W…
In many real-world applications such as business planning and sensor data monitoring, one important, yet challenging, the task is to rank objects(e.g., products, documents, or spatial objects) based on their ranking scores and efficiently return those objects with the highest scores. In practice, due to the unreliability of data sources, many real-world objects often contain noises and are thus imprecise and uncertain. In this paper, we study the problem of probabilistic top-k dominating(PTD) query on such large-scale uncertain data in a distributed environment, which retrieves k uncertain obj…
Consistent Query Answering (CQA) is the problem of computing from a database the answers to a query that are consistent with respect to certain integrity constraints that the database, as a whole, may fail to satisfy. Consistent answers have been characterized as those that are invariant under certain minimal forms of restoration of the database consistency. We investigate algorithmic and complexity theoretic issues of CQA under database repairs that minimally depart -wrt the cardinality of the symmetric difference- from the original database. We obtain first tight complexity bounds. We also a…
In recent years, due to the wide applications of uncertain data, mining frequent itemsets over uncertain databases has attracted much attention. In uncertain databases, the support of an itemset is a random variable instead of a fixed occurrence counting of this itemset. Thus, unlike the corresponding problem in deterministic databases where the frequent itemset has a unique definition, the frequent itemset under uncertain environments has two different definitions so far. The first definition, referred as the expected support-based frequent itemset, employs the expectation of the support of a…
Recent trends in information management involve the periodic transcription of data onto secondary devices in a networked environment, and the proper scheduling of these transcriptions is critical for efficient data management. To assist in the scheduling process, we are interested in modeling the reduction of consistency over time between a relation and its replica, termed obsolescence of data. The modeling is based on techniques from the field of stochastic processes, and provides several stochastic models for content evolution in the base relations of a database, taking referential integrity…
How should we quantify the inconsistency of a database that violates integrity constraints? Proper measures are important for various tasks, such as progress indication and action prioritization in cleaning systems, and reliability estimation for new datasets. To choose an appropriate inconsistency measure, it is important to identify the desired properties in the application and understand which of these is guaranteed or at least expected in practice. For example, in some use cases the inconsistency should reduce if constraints are eliminated; in others it should be stable and avoid jitters a…
Preference queries are relational algebra or SQL queries that contain occurrences of the winnow operator ("find the most preferred tuples in a given relation"). Such queries are parameterized by specific preference relations. Semantic optimization techniques make use of integrity constraints holding in the database. In the context of semantic optimization of preference queries, we identify two fundamental properties: containment of preference relations relative to integrity constraints and satisfaction of order axioms relative to integrity constraints. We show numerous applications of those no…
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez（阿道夫·伊瓦涅斯大学）；Millenium Institute on Foundations of Data（数据基础千年研究所）
A correspondence between database tuples as causes for query answers in databases and tuple-based repairs of inconsistent databases with respect to denial constraints has already been established. In this work, answer-set programs that specify repairs of databases are used as a basis for solving computational and reasoning problems about causes. Here, causes are also introduced at the attribute level by appealing to a both null-based and attribute-based repair semantics. The corresponding repair programs are presented, and they are used as a basis for computation and reasoning about attribute-…
Location data is inherently uncertain for many reasons including 1) imprecise location measurements, 2) obsolete observations that are often interpolated, and 3) deliberate obfuscation to preserve location privacy. What makes handling uncertainty data challenging is the exponentially large number of possible worlds, which lies in O(2^N), for a database having N uncertain objects as it has been shown that general query processing in uncertain spatial data is NP-hard. Many applications using spatial data require counting the number of spatial objects within a region. An example is the k-Nearest …
Unsupervised classification called clustering is a process of organizing objects into groups whose members are similar in some way. Clustering of uncertain data objects is a challenge in spatial data bases. In this paper we use Probability Density Functions (PDF) to represent these uncertain data objects, and apply Uncertain K-Means algorithm to generate the clusters. This clustering algorithm uses the Expected Distance (ED) to compute the distance between objects and cluster representatives. To further improve the performance of UK-Means we propose a novel technique called Voronoi Diagrams fr…
