Logic and Databases: The Roots of Relational Theory

Front Cover
Trafford Publishing, 2007 - Computers - 460 pages

Logic and databases are inextricably intertwined. The relational model in particular is essentially just elementary predicate logic, tailored to fit the needs of database management. Now, if you're a database professional, I'm sure this isn't news to you; but you still might not realize just how much everything we do in the database world is - or should be! - affected by predicate logic. Logic is everywhere.

So if you're a database professional you really owe it to yourself to understand the basics of formal logic, and you really ought to be able to explain (and perhaps defend) the connections between formal logic and database management. And that's what this book is about. What it does is show, through a series of partly independent and partly interrelate essays, just how various crucial aspects of database technology-some of them very familiar, others maybe less so- are solidly grounded in formal logic. It is divided into five parts:

*Basic Logic
*Logic and Database Management
*Logic and Database Design
*Logic and Algebra
*Logic and the Third Manifesto

There's also a lengthy appendix, containing a collection of frequently asked questions (and some answers) on various aspects of logic and database management. Overall, my goal is to help you realize the importance of logic in everything you do, and also- I hope- to help you see that logic can be fun.

 

Contents

The Building Blocks of Logic
3
Some Operators Are More Equal Than Others
41
LOGIC AND DATABASE MANAGEMENT
65
The Closed World Assumption
95
Why Relational DBMSS Must Be Based on Logic
119
LOGIC AND DATABASE DESIGN
153
Normalization from Top to Bottom
177
LOGIC AND ALGEBRA
235
An Investigative Tutorial
283
LOGIC AND THE THIRD MANIFESTO
299
To Be Is to Be a Value of a Variable
309
And Now for Something Completely Computational
329
The Logic of View Updating
339
Appendix Frequently Asked Questions
377
Index
439
Copyright

Semijoin and Semidifference
275

Common terms and phrases

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