Bounded-Memory Criteria for Streams with Application Time
This work addresses the challenge of efficient query answering in stream processing for AI and database applications, though it appears incremental as it builds on classical OBDA methods.
The paper tackles the problem of deciding whether select-project-join queries over streams with application time can be answered in bounded memory, presenting criteria that enable this determination and can be applied to improve efficiency in answering high-level queries in Ontology-Based Data Access.
Bounded-memory computability continues to be in the focus of those areas of AI and databases that deal with feasible computations over streams---be it feasible arithmetical calculations on low-level streams or feasible query answering for declaratively specified queries on relational data streams or even feasible query answering for high-level queries on streams w.r.t. a set of constraints in an ontology such as in the paradigm of Ontology-Based Data Access (OBDA). In classical OBDA, a high-level query is answered by transforming it into a query on data source level. The transformation requires a rewriting step, where knowledge from an ontology is incorporated into the query, followed by an unfolding step with respect to a set of mappings. Given an OBDA setting it is very difficult to decide, whether and how a query can be answered efficiently. In particular it is difficult to decide whether a query can be answered in bounded memory, i.e., in constant space w.r.t. an infinitely growing prefix of a data stream. This work presents criteria for bounded-memory computability of select-project-join (SPJ) queries over streams with application time. Deciding whether an SPJ query can be answered in constant space is easier than for high-level queries, as neither an ontology nor a set of mappings are part of the input. Using the transformation process of classical OBDA, these criteria then can help deciding the efficiency of answering high-level queries on streams.