9221268 Vianu Database Queries and Updates: Languages and Computational Aspects This is the first year funding of a three-year continuing award. Queries and updates are essential components of any database system. Databases provide languages by which users and application programs specify queries and updates. The design of such languages requires understanding the interplay of various language constructs and semantics, and the properties and structure of the database. These factors have important consequences concerning the expressive power of the languages and the complexity of evaluating the queries in these languages. Understanding these issues allows the language designer to be aware of the trade-offs involved and make informed decisions. This research project concerns such issues. Specifically, it focuses on new languages and programming constructs arising in modern database programming in the relational, deductive, and object-oriented frameworks. The results of this investigation will provide tools for the design of languages in the various paradigms, which will be essential components of future database systems for advanced applications. ***
