Revisiting the Algebraic Foundation of Relational Data
arXiv:2607.26356
summary
The paper reexamines Tarski's Algebra of Relations as a basis for relational databases and introduces Prela, a new query language built on this algebra.
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.
Topics & keywords
#relational algebra#query languages#database theory#formal methods#software architectureTarski's Algebra of RelationsPrelasemantic abstractionquery optimization