 | This article includes a list ofgeneral references, butit lacks sufficient correspondinginline citations. Please help toimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(November 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Database theory encapsulates a broad range of topics related to the study and research of the theoretical realm ofdatabases anddatabase management systems.
Theoretical aspects of data management include, among other areas, the foundations of query languages,computational complexity andexpressive power of queries,finite model theory,database design theory,dependency theory, foundations ofconcurrency control anddatabase recovery,deductive databases,temporal andspatial databases,real-time databases, managinguncertain data andprobabilistic databases, and Web data.
Most research work has traditionally been based on therelational model, since this model is usually considered the simplest and most foundational model of interest. Corresponding results for other data models, such as object-oriented orsemi-structured models, or, more recently, graph data models andXML, are often derivable from those for the relational model.[1]
Database theory helps one to understand the complexity and power of query languages and their connection tologic. Starting fromrelational algebra andfirst-order logic (which are equivalent byCodd's theorem) and the insight that important queries such asgraph reachability are not expressible in this language,[2] more powerful languages based onlogic programming andfixpoint logic such asDatalog were studied.[3] The theory also explores foundations ofquery optimization anddata integration. Here most work studiedconjunctive queries, which admit query optimization even under constraints using thechase algorithm.
The main research conferences in the area are theACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) and theInternational Conference on Database Theory (ICDT).
Media related toDatabase theory at Wikimedia Commons
