Tables As a Paradigm for Querying and Restructuring
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Abstract
) Marc Gyssens y University of Limburg Laks V.S. Lakshmanan z Concordia University Iyer N. Subramanian z Concordia University Abstract Tables are one of the most natural representations of real-life data. Previous table-based data models (such as relational, nested relational, and complex objects models) capture only a limited variety of real-life tables. In this paper, we study the foundations of tabular representations of data. We propose the tabular database model for handling a broad class of natural data representations and develop tabular algebra as a language for querying and restructuring tabular data. We show that the tabular algebra is complete for a very general class of transformations and show that several languages designed for very different purposes can naturally be embedded into the tabular model. We also demonstrate the applicability of our model as a theoretical foundation for on-line analytical processing (OLAP), an emerging technology for complementing the r...