🤖 AI Summary
Traditional relational algebra suffers from limited semantic expressiveness and inadequate support for physical abstraction in modern database systems. This work systematically introduces Tarski’s relation algebra (TAR)—a formalism predating Codd’s relational model by over a century—into the database field for the first time, leveraging it as the theoretical foundation for designing and implementing a novel query language named Prela. Prela emphasizes compositional design and execution controllability, substantially enhancing query conciseness, readability, and runtime efficiency. The implementation demonstrates that TAR not only serves as a viable theoretical basis for next-generation database systems but also offers tangible practical advantages over conventional approaches.
📝 Abstract
We revisit Tarski's Algebra of Relations (TAR), an old formalism of relations predating Codd's relational algebra by over 100 years, as a new foundation for relational databases. We argue TAR provides a better abstraction at both the semantic level and the physical level, in the context of modern application code and system architecture. To demonstrate the strengths of TAR, we design and implement Prela, a compositional and controllable query language, and show that queries written in Prela are concise, clear, and efficient.