Schema Mappings for Data Graphs

Nadime Francis, Leonid Libkin

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Schema mappings are a fundamental concept in data integration and exchange, and they have been thoroughly studied in different data models. For graph data, however, mappings have been studied in a restricted context that, unlike real-life graph databases, completely disregards the data they store. Our main goal is to understand query answering under graph schema mappings { in particular, in exchange and integration of graph data { for graph databases that mix graph structure with data. We show that adding data querying alters the picture in a significant way.
As the model, we use data graphs: a theoretical abstraction of property graphs employed by graph database implementations. We start by showing a very strong negative result: using the simplest form of nontrivial navigation in mappings makes answering even simple queries that mix navigation and data undecidable. This result suggests that for the purposes of integration and exchange, schema mappings ought to exclude recursively defined navigation over target data. For such mappings and analogs of regular path queries that take data into account, query answering becomes decidable, although intractable. To restore tractability without imposing further restrictions on queries, we propose a new approach based on the use of null values that resemble usual nulls of relational DBMSs, as opposed to marked nulls one typically uses in integration and exchange tasks. If one moves away from path queries and considers more complex patterns, query answering becomes undecidable again, even for the simplest possible mappings.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPODS '17 Proceedings of the 36th ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems
PublisherACM
Pages389-401
Number of pages13
ISBN (Print)978-1-4503-4198-1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 May 2017
Event36th ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems - New York, United States
Duration: 14 May 201719 May 2017

Conference

Conference36th ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew York
Period14/05/1719/05/17

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