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Volume 2, Issue 3
2006
1. On the complexity of XPath containment in the presence of disjunction, DTDs, and variables
XPath is a simple language for navigating an XML-tree and returning a set of answer nodes. The focus in this paper is on the complexity of the containment problem for various fragments of XPath. We restrict attention to the most common XPath expressions which navigate along the child and/or descendant axis. In addition to basic expressions using only node tests and simple predicates, we also consider disjunction and variables (ranging over nodes). Further, we investigate the containment problem relative to a given DTD. With respect to variables we study two semantics, (1) the original semantics of XPath, where the values of variables are given by an outer context, and (2) an existential semantics introduced by Deutsch and Tannen, in which the values of variables are existentially quantified. In this framework, we establish an exact classification of the complexity of the containment problem for many XPath fragments.
2. Logics for Unranked Trees: An Overview
Labeled unranked trees are used as a model of XML documents, and logical languages for them have been studied actively over the past several years. Such logics have different purposes: some are better suited for extracting data, some for expressing navigational properties, and some make it easy to relate complex properties of trees to the existence of tree automata for those properties. Furthermore, logics differ significantly in their model-checking properties, their automata models, and their behavior on ordered and unordered trees. In this paper we present a survey of logics for unranked trees.
3. Relational Parametricity and Control
We study the equational theory of Parigot's second-order λμ-calculus in connection with a call-by-name continuation-passing style (CPS) translation into a fragment of the second-order λ-calculus. It is observed that the relational parametricity on the target calculus induces a natural notion of equivalence on the λμ-terms. On the other hand, the unconstrained relational parametricity on the λμ-calculus turns out to be inconsistent with this CPS semantics. Following these facts, we propose to formulate the relational parametricity on the λμ-calculus in a constrained way, which might be called ``focal parametricity''.
4. Resource Usage Analysis for the Pi-Calculus
We propose a type-based resource usage analysis for the π-calculus extended with resource creation/access primitives. The goal of the resource usage analysis is to statically check that a program accesses resources such as files and memory in a valid manner. Our type system is an extension of previous behavioral type systems for the π-calculus, and can guarantee the safety property that no invalid access is performed, as well as the property that necessary accesses (such as the close operation for a file) are eventually performed unless the program diverges. A sound type inference algorithm for the type system is also developed to free the programmer from the burden of writing complex type annotations. Based on the algorithm, we have implemented a prototype resource usage analyzer for the π-calculus. To the authors' knowledge, ours is the first type-based resource usage analysis that deals with an expressive concurrent language like the pi-calculus.
5. Efficient Open World Reasoning for Planning
We consider the problem of reasoning and planning with incomplete knowledge and deterministic actions. We introduce a knowledge representation scheme called PSIPLAN that can effectively represent incompleteness of an agent's knowledge while allowing for sound, complete and tractable entailment in domains where the set of all objects is either unknown or infinite. We present a procedure for state update resulting from taking an action in PSIPLAN that is correct, complete and has only polynomial complexity. State update is performed without considering the set of all possible worlds corresponding to the knowledge state. As a result, planning with PSIPLAN is done without direct manipulation of possible worlds. PSIPLAN representation underlies the PSIPOP planning algorithm that handles quantified goals with or without exceptions that no other domain independent planner has been shown to achieve. PSIPLAN has been implemented in Common Lisp and used in an application on planning in a collaborative interface.
6. Tarski's influence on computer science
The influence of Alfred Tarski on computer science was indirect but significant in a number of directions and was in certain respects fundamental. Here surveyed is the work of Tarski on the decision procedure for algebra and geometry, the method of elimination of quantifiers, the semantics of formal languages, modeltheoretic preservation theorems, and algebraic logic; various connections of each with computer science are taken up.