Specifying queries as relational expressions

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Specifying queries as relational expressions: the SQUARE data sublanguage

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Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 18 , Issue 11 (November 1975) table of contents

Pages: 621 - 628

Year of Publication: 1975

ISSN:0001-0782

Authors

Raymond F. Boyce	IBM Research Lab., San Jose, CA
Donald D. Chamberlin	IBM Research Lab., San Jose, CA
W. Frank King, III	IBM Research Lab., San Jose, CA
Michael M. Hammer	Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

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ACM New York, NY, USA

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Downloads (6 Weeks): 3, Downloads (12 Months): 49, Citation Count: 24

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ABSTRACT

This paper presents a data sublanguage called SQUARE, intended for use in ad hoc, interactive problem solving by non-computer specialists. SQUARE is based on the relational model of data, and is shown to be relationally complete; however, it avoids the quantifiers and bound variables required by languages based on the relational calculus. Facilities for query, insertion, deletion, and update on tabular data bases are described. A syntax is given, and suggestions are made for alternative syntaxes, including a syntax based on English key words for users with limited mathematical background.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

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	Donald D. Chamberlin , Morton M. Astrahan , Michael W. Blasgen , James N. Gray , W. Frank King , Bruce G. Lindsay , Raymond Lorie , James W. Mehl , Thomas G. Price , Franco Putzolu , Patricia Griffiths Selinger , Mario Schkolnick , Donald R. Slutz , Irving L. Traiger , Bradford W. Wade , Robert A. Yost, A history and evaluation of System R, Communications of the ACM, v.24 n.10, p.632-646, Oct. 1981
	Claude Deheneffe , Henri Hennebert, NUL: a Navigational User's Language for a network structured data base, Proceedings of the 1976 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, June 02-04, 1976, Washington, D.C.
	Tamer M. Ozso , Esen A. Ozkarahan, SYNGLISH - a high level query language for the RAP database machine, ACM SIGIR Forum, v.15 n.2, p.139-150, March 1980
	Michael D. Williams , Frederich N. Tou, RABBIT: An interface for database access, Proceedings of the ACM '82 conference, p.83-87, January 1982
	L. Kerschberg , E. A. Ozkarahan , J. E.S. Pacheco, A Synthetic English query language for a relational associative processor, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Software engineering, p.505-519, October 13-15, 1976, San Francisco, California, United States
	Joachim W. Schmidt, Some high level language constructs for data of type relation, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.2 n.3, p.247-261, Sept. 1977
	Phyllis Reisner, Human Factors Studies of Database Query Languages: A Survey and Assessment, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.13 n.1, p.13-31, March 1981
	Martha A. Centeno , Charles R. Standridge, Databases and artificial intelligence: enabling technologies for simulation modeling, Proceedings of the 24th conference on Winter simulation, p.181-189, December 13-16, 1992, Arlington, Virginia, United States
	I. Ganapathy , R. F. Hobson, GPMS, a general purpose memory management system—user's memory—that is., Proceedings of the eighth international conference on APL, p.155-165, September 22-24, 1976, Ottawa, Canada
	Charles Welty , David W. Stemple, Human factors comparison of a procedural and a nonprocedural query language, ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS), v.6 n.4, p.626-649, Dec. 1981
	Antonio L. Furtado , Larry Kerschberg, An algebra of quotient relations, Proceedings of the 1977 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, August 03-05, 1977, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
	Hai Zhuge, Resource space model, its design method and applications, Journal of Systems and Software, v.72 n.1, p.71-81, June 2004
	Michel Lacroix , Alain Pirotte, ILL: an English structured query language for relational data bases, ACM SIGART Bulletin
	Matthias Jarke , Yannis Vassiliou, A framework for choosing a database query language, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.17 n.3, p.313-340, Sept. 1985
	H. Rex Hartson , David K. Hsiao, A semantic model for data base protection languages, Proceedings of the second international conference on Systems for Large Data Bases, p.27-42, September 08-10, 1976, Brussels, Belgium, North Holland
	Larry Kerschberg , Anthony C. Klug , Dennis Tsichritzis, A taxonomy of data models, Proceedings of the second international conference on Systems for Large Data Bases, p.43-64, September 08-10, 1976, Brussels, Belgium, North Holland
	Alain Pirotte, Fundamental and secondary issues in the design of non-procedural relational languages, Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Very Large Data Bases, p.239-250, October 03-05, 1979, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
	Emilio Luque , José J. Ruz , Ana Ripoll , Alfredo Bautista, Database concurrent processor, Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Very Large Data Bases, p.273-279, October 03-05, 1979, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
	John C. Thomas, Psychological issues in data base management, Proceedings of the third international conference on Very large data bases, p.169-186, October 06-08, 1977, Tokyo, Japan
	Michel Lacroix , Alain Pirotte, Domain-oriented relational languages, Proceedings of the third international conference on Very large data bases, p.370-378, October 06-08, 1977, Tokyo, Japan
	Gaston H. Gonnet , Frank Wm. Tompa, Mind Your Grammar: a New Approach to Modelling Text, Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, p.339-346, September 01-04, 1987
	Levent Ormancioglu, An information base for procedure independent design of information systems, Proceedings of the May 19-22, 1980, national computer conference, May 19-22, 1980, Anaheim, California
	Phyllis Reisner , Raymond F. Boyce , Donald D. Chamberlin, Human factors evaluation of two data base query languages: square and sequel, Proceedings of the May 19-22, 1975, national computer conference and exposition, May 19-22, 1975, Anaheim, California