OPTIMIZATION OF A SUBCLASS OF CONJUNCTIVE QUERIES

The optimization problem for a subclass of conjunctive queries which is formed by the union of the class of fan-out free queries and a subclass of typed fan-out queries is investigated. The typed fan-out queries in this class are obtained from simple tableaux by allowing atmost one attribute to violate the simple-tableau property. The optimization problem for several restricted subsets of typed fan-out queries is already known to be NP-hard. It is shown that the queries under consideration possess several useful properties which are then used to obtain an O(n(2)) optimization algorithm based on the implication graph technique. The optimization of typed fan-out queries, obtained from simple tableaux by allowing atmost two attributes to violate the simple tableau property, is shown to be NP-hard. The optimization of simple tableaux in the presence of functional dependencies is also investigated and is shown to be NP-hard.