We study the worst-case communication complexity of the join query evaluation problem over large-scale data in distributed shared-nothing systems under the MPC model. We focus on multi-round MPC algorithms that run in constant number of rounds. The problem is well-understood for a few classes of queries, mainly the class of acyclic queries and the class of graph-like queries. For queries not belonging to either class, the complexity picture is much less clear. We study the class of degree-two queries and fragments thereof. In this paper, we tighten the gap between the upper and lower bounds for the studied classes and establish worst-case optimality for some fragments of the considered classes. We also debunk a well-believed conjecture about which query-related quantity, in the worst-case, optimally captures the communication complexity of the studied problem.

Motivated by old and new applications, we investigate Datalog as a language for sequence databases. We reconsider classical features of Datalog programs, such as negation, recursion, intermediate predicates, and relations of higher arities. We also consider new features that are useful for sequences, notably, equations between path expressions, and “packing”. Our goal is to clarify the relative expressiveness of all these different features, in the context of sequences. Towards our goal, we establish a number of redundancy and primitivity results, showing that certain features can, or cannot, be expressed in terms of other features. These results paint a complete picture of the expressiveness relationships among all possible Sequence Datalog fragments that can be formed using the six features that we consider.

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Last year we introduced the logic FLIF (forward logic of information flows) as a declarative language for specifying complex compositions of information sources with limited access patterns. The key insight of this approach is to view a system of information sources as a graph, where the nodes are valuations of variables, so that accesses to information sources can be modeled as edges in the graph. This allows the use of XPath-like navigational graph query languages. Indeed, a well-behaved fragment of FLIF, called io-disjoint FLIF, was shown to be equivalent to the executable fragment of first-order logic. It remained open, however, how io-disjoint FLIF compares to general FLIF . In this paper we close this gap by showing that general FLIF expressions can always be put into io-disjoint form.

Motivated by old and new applications, we investigate Datalog as a language for sequence databases. We reconsider classical features of Datalog programs, such as negation, recursion, intermediate predicates, and relations of higher arities. We also consider new features that are useful for sequences, notably, equations between path expressions, and "packing''. Our goal is to clarify the relative expressiveness of all these different features, in the context of sequences. Towards our goal, we establish a number of redundancy and primitivity results, showing that certain features can, or cannot, be expressed in terms of other features. These results paint a complete picture of the expressiveness relationships among all possible Sequence Datalog fragments that can be formed using the six features that we consider.

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The logic of information flows (LIF) has recently been proposed as a general framework in the field of knowledge representation. In this framework, tasks of a procedural nature can still be modeled in a declarative, logic-based fashion. In this paper, we focus on the task of query processing under limited access patterns, a well-studied problem in the database literature. We show that LIF is well-suited for modeling this task. Toward this goal, we introduce a variant of LIF called "forward" LIF, in a first-order setting. We define FLIF^io, a syntactical fragment of forward LIF, and show that it corresponds exactly to the "executable" fragment of first-order logic defined by Nash and Ludäscher. The definition of FLIF^io involves a classification of the free variables of an expression into "input" and "output" variables. Our result hinges on inertia and determinacy laws for forward LIF expressions, which are interesting in their own right. These laws are formulated in terms of the input and output variables.