Logic-based analysis and synthesis of database queries

This will be an informal talk about the role of first-order logic in database query languages. I will review a bit of the history of logic within query languages, starting from Codd's work on relational databases in the early 70's. I'll underline two correspondences between logical languages and database implementations that hold for the relational model, before turning to the situation for richer data models, suitable for modeling programming language objects, XML, and JSON.  I will give some basic results about the connection of logical languages and algebraic query plans in this setting, extensions of the translations established for the relational model. I'll briefly mention connections of this topic to work within mathematical logic.

I'm aiming to make the seminar not so technical, and I should be accessible to non-experts in databases. The talk is based on discussion with Ehud Hrushovski, Stanislav Kikot, Milos Nikolic, Jaclyn Smith, and Szymon Torunczyk.