Possible and Certain Answers for Queries over Order-Incomplete Data

To combine and query ordered data from multiple sources, one needs to handle uncertainty about the possible orderings. Examples of such “order-incomplete” data include integrated event sequences such as log entries; lists of properties (e.g., hotels and restaurants) ranked by an unknown function reflecting relevance or customer ratings; and documents edited concurrently with an uncertain order on edits. This paper introduces a query language for order-incomplete data, based on the positive relational algebra with order-aware accumulation. We use partial orders to represent order-incomplete data, and study possible and certain answers for queries in this context. We show that these problems are respectively NP-complete and coNP-complete, but identify many tractable cases depending on the query operators or input partial orders. 1998 ACM Subject Classification H.2.1 Database Management – Logical Design