Obtaining Information about Queries behind Views and Dependencies

Abstract: We consider the problems of finding and determining certain query answers and of determining containment between queries; each problem is formulated in presence of materialized views and dependencies under the closed-world assumption. We show a tight relationship between the problems in this setting. Further, we introduce algorithms for solving each problem for those inputs where all the queries and views are conjunctive, and the dependencies are embedded weakly acyclic. We also determine the complexity of each problem under the security-relevant complexity measure introduced by Zhang and Mendelzon in 2005. The problems studied in this paper are fundamental in ensuring correct specification of database access-control policies, in particular in case of fine-grained access control. Our approaches can also be applied in the areas of inference control, secure data publishing, and database auditing.