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On XPath with transitive axes and data tests

Published:22 June 2013Publication History

ABSTRACT

We study the satisfiability problem for XPath with data equality tests. XPath is a node selecting language for XML documents whose satisfiability problem is known to be undecidable, even for very simple fragments. However, we show that the satisfiability for XPath with the rightward, leftward and downward reflexive-transitive axes (namely following-sibling-or-self, preceding-sibling-or-self, descendant-or-self) is decidable. Our algorithm yields a complexity of 3EXPSPACE, and we also identify an expressive-equivalent normal form for the logic for which the satisfiability problem is in 2EXPSPACE. These results are in contrast with the undecidability of the satisfiability problem as soon as we replace the reflexive-transitive axes with just transitive (non-reflexive) ones.

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        • Published in

          cover image ACM Conferences
          PODS '13: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI symposium on Principles of database systems
          June 2013
          334 pages
          ISBN:9781450320665
          DOI:10.1145/2463664
          • General Chair:
          • Richard Hull,
          • Program Chair:
          • Wenfei Fan

          Copyright © 2013 ACM

          Publisher

          Association for Computing Machinery

          New York, NY, United States

          Publication History

          • Published: 22 June 2013

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          PODS '13 Paper Acceptance Rate24of97submissions,25%Overall Acceptance Rate476of1,835submissions,26%

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