Minimizing Conjunctive Regular Path Queries

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Figueira, Diego, Morvan, Rémi, Romero, Miguel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Figueira, Diego
Morvan, Rémi
Romero, Miguel
author_facet Figueira, Diego
Morvan, Rémi
Romero, Miguel
contents We study the minimization problem for Conjunctive Regular Path Queries (CRPQs) and unions of CRPQs (UCRPQs). This is the problem of checking, given a query and a number $k$, whether the query is equivalent to one of size at most $k$. For CRPQs we consider the size to be the number of atoms, and for UCRPQs the maximum number of atoms in a CRPQ therein, motivated by the fact that the number of atoms has a leading influence on the cost of query evaluation. We show that the minimization problem is decidable, both for CRPQs and UCRPQs. We provide a 2ExpSpace upper-bound for CRPQ minimization, based on a brute-force enumeration algorithm, and an ExpSpace lower-bound. For UCRPQs, we show that the problem is ExpSpace-complete, having thus the same complexity as the classical containment problem. The upper bound is obtained by defining and computing a notion of maximal under-approximation. Moreover, we show that for UCRPQs using the so-called "simple regular expressions" consisting of concatenations of expressions of the form $a^+$ or $a_1 + \dotsb + a_k$, the minimization problem becomes $Π^p_2$-complete, again matching the complexity of containment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_00612
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Minimizing Conjunctive Regular Path Queries
Figueira, Diego
Morvan, Rémi
Romero, Miguel
Databases
We study the minimization problem for Conjunctive Regular Path Queries (CRPQs) and unions of CRPQs (UCRPQs). This is the problem of checking, given a query and a number $k$, whether the query is equivalent to one of size at most $k$. For CRPQs we consider the size to be the number of atoms, and for UCRPQs the maximum number of atoms in a CRPQ therein, motivated by the fact that the number of atoms has a leading influence on the cost of query evaluation. We show that the minimization problem is decidable, both for CRPQs and UCRPQs. We provide a 2ExpSpace upper-bound for CRPQ minimization, based on a brute-force enumeration algorithm, and an ExpSpace lower-bound. For UCRPQs, we show that the problem is ExpSpace-complete, having thus the same complexity as the classical containment problem. The upper bound is obtained by defining and computing a notion of maximal under-approximation. Moreover, we show that for UCRPQs using the so-called "simple regular expressions" consisting of concatenations of expressions of the form $a^+$ or $a_1 + \dotsb + a_k$, the minimization problem becomes $Π^p_2$-complete, again matching the complexity of containment.
title Minimizing Conjunctive Regular Path Queries
topic Databases
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.00612