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All Projects → wernsey → Jatalog

wernsey / Jatalog

Licence: Apache-2.0 license
Java Datalog Engine with Semi-Naive Evaluation and Stratified Negation

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Jatalog: Java Datalog Engine with Semi-Naive Evaluation and Stratified Negation

Datalog is a subset of the Prolog programming language that is used as a query language in deductive databases[wiki].

Jatalog is a Datalog implementation in Java. It provides a parser for the language and an evaluation engine to execute queries that can be embedded into larger applications.

Summary

  • The engine implements semi-naive, bottom-up evaluation.
  • It implements stratified negation; Technically, it implements the Stratified Datalog¬ language[ceri].
  • It can parse and evaluate Datalog programs from files and Strings (actually anything that implements java.io.Reader).
  • It has a fluent API through which it can be embedded in Java applications to run queries.
  • It implements "=", "<>" (alternatively "!="), "<", "<=", ">" and ">=" as built-in predicates.
  • It avoids third party dependencies.
  • Values with "quoted strings" are supported.
  • Retract facts with the ~ operator, for example p(q,r)~.
  • The class Shell implements a REPL command-line interface.

Introduction

A Datalog program consists of facts and rules. Facts describe knowledge about the world. Rules describe the relationships between facts from which new facts can be derived.

The following Datalog program describes that Alice is a parent of Bob and Bob is a parent of Carol, and then provides rules for deriving an ancestor relationship from the facts[wiki]:

% Facts:
parent(alice, bob).
parent(bob, carol).

% Rules:
ancestor(X, Y) :- parent(X, Y).
ancestor(X, Y) :- ancestor(X, Z), parent(Z, Y).

Variables in Datalog are capitalized. In the example, X, Y and Z are variables, whereas alice and bob are constants. Facts cannot contain variables - they are said to be ground.

The collection of facts is called the Extensional Database (EDB).

In the fact parent(alice, bob) the parent is called the predicate, while alice and bob are the terms. The number of terms is called the arity. The arity of parent is 2 and some literature will write it as parent/2. It is expected that all facts with the same predicate will have the same arity.

In the example, the two facts

  • parent(alice, bob) reads "alice is a parent of bob"
  • parent(bob, carol) reads "bob is a parent of carol"

The collection of rules is called the Intensional Database (IDB). Rules consist of a head and a body, separated by a :- symbol. The head of the rule describes a new fact that can be derived whereas the body describes how that fact should be derived.

In the rule ancestor(X, Y) :- parent(X, Y) the ancestor(X, Y) is the head, and parent(X, Y) is the body. It specifies that the fact "X is an ancestor of Y" can be derived if the fact "X is a parent of Y" holds true.

It is also said that the body of the rule implies the head, so parent(X, Y) implies ancestor(X, Y).

The Datalog engine will use this rule to determine that "alice is an ancestor of bob" and "bob is an ancestor of carol" when queries are executed.

The second rule ancestor(X, Y) :- ancestor(X, Z), parent(Z, Y) says that the fact "X is an ancestor of Y" can also be derived if there exists a Z such that "X is an ancestor of Z" and "Z is a parent of Y".

Using this rule, the Datalog engine will determine that "alice is an ancestor of carol" from all the other facts that have already been derived during query evaluation.

Queries can be run against the database once the facts and the rules have been entered into the system:

  • ancestor(X, carol)? queries "who are carol's ancestors?"
  • ancestor(alice, Y)? queries "of who is alice the ancestor?"
  • ancestor(alice, carol)? asks "Is alice an ancestor of carol?"

Answers come in the form of a collection of the mapping of variable names to values that satisfy the query. For example, the query ancestor(X, carol)?'s results will be {X: alice} and {X: bob}.

Jatalog implements some built-in predicates which can be used in rules and queries: equals "=", not equals "<>", greater than ">", greater or equals ">=", less than "<" and less or equals "<=".

You can have multiple clauses in a query, separated by commas. For example sibling(A, B), A <> alice? asks "who are siblings of A where A is not alice?"

Additionally, Jatalog's syntax uses the ~ symbol for retracting facts form the database. For example, the statement planet(pluto)~ will retract the fact that pluto is a planet. The syntax is adapted from [rack]'s, but it is unclear whether other Datalog implementations use it.

The retract query can contain variables and multiple clauses: The statement thing(N, X), X > 5~ will delete all things from the database where X is greater than 5.

Fluent API

In addition to an interpreter for the Datalog language, Jatalog also provides an API through which the database can be accessed and queried directly in Java programs.

The following is an example of how the facts and the rules from above example can be written using the Fluent API:

Jatalog jatalog = new Jatalog();

jatalog.fact("parent", "alice", "bob")
    .fact("parent", "bob", "carol");

jatalog.rule(Expr.expr("ancestor", "X", "Y"), Expr.expr("parent", "X", "Z"), Expr.expr("ancestor", "Z", "Y"))
    .rule(Expr.expr("ancestor", "X", "Y"), Expr.expr("parent", "X", "Y"));

The queries can then then be executed as follows:

Collection<Map<String, String>> answers;
answers = jatalog.query(Expr.expr("ancestor", "X", "carol"));

The answers collection will contain a list of all the variable mappings that satisfy the query:

{X: alice}
{X: bob}

The query from the previous example can also be written as

answers = jatalog.executeAll("ancestor(X, carol)?");

Jatalog also provides a Jatalog.prepareStatement() method that will parse strings into Statement objects that can be executed later. The Statement.execute() method takes a Map<String, String> of variable bindings as a parameter, so that it can be used to do batch inserts or queries. For example:

Statement statement = Jatalog.prepareStatement("sibling(Me, You)?");
Map<String, String> bindings = Jatalog.makeBindings("Me", "bob");
Collection<Map<String, String>> answers;
answers = statement.execute(jatalog, bindings);

In the above example, the variable Me is bound to the value bob, so the statement.execute(...) line is equivalent to executing the query sibling(bob, You)?.

The Javadoc documentation contains more information and the unit tests in the src/test directory contain some more examples.

Implementation

Jatalog's evaluation engine is bottom-up, semi-naive with stratified negation.

Bottom-up means that the evaluator will start with all the known facts in the EDB and use the rules to derive new facts. It will repeat this process until no more new facts can be derived. It will then match all of the facts to the goal of the query to determine the answer (The alternative is top-down, where the evaluator starts with a series of goals and use the rules and facts in the database to prove those goals).

Semi-naive is an optimization of the Datalog engine wherein the evaluator will only consider a subset of the rules that may be affected by facts derived during the previous iteration, rather than all of the rules in the IDB.

Stratified negation means that the order in which rules are evaluated are arranged in such a way that negated goals cause sensible facts to be derived.

Consider, for example, the rule p(X) :- q(X), not r(X). with the fact q(a) present in the EDB, but not r(a), and suppose that there are other rules in the database that imply p(X) and r(X). If the engine were to evaluate these rules naively then it will derive the fact p(a) in the initial iteration. It is then possible that the fact r(a) may be derived in a subsequent iteration, which results in the facts p(a) and r(a) contradicting each other.

The stratified negation evaluates the rules in an order such that all the r(X) facts are derived before any of the p(X) facts can be derived which eliminates such contradictions.

Stratified negation puts additional constraints on the usage of negated expressions in Jatalog, which the engine checks for.

Usage

If you want to use the Java API, you just need to add the compiled JAR to your classpath.

The Main-Class in the JAR's manifest points to za.co.wstoop.jatalog.Shell, which implements the REPL interface. To start the interpreter, simply run the JAR file with the Java -jar command-line option.

With Maven

The preferred method of building Jatalog is through Maven.

# Compile like so:
mvn package

# Generate Javadocs
mvn javadoc:javadoc

# Run like so:
java -jar target/jatalog-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar file.dl

Where file.dl is the name of a file containing Datalog commands to be executed. It is omitted, the interpreter will enter an interactive mode where commands will be read from System.in

With Ant

An Ant build.xml file is also provided:

# Compile like so:
ant 

# Generate Javadocs
ant docs

# Run like so:
java -jar dist/jatalog-0.9.jar

License

Jatalog is licensed under the Apache license version 2:

Copyright 2015-2016 Werner Stoop

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

References:

Ideas and Notes

Just some thoughts on how the system is currently implemented and how it can be improved in the future

There are opportunities to run some of the methods in parallel using the Java 8 Streams API (I'm thinking of the calls to expandStrata() in expandDatabase() and the calls to matchRule() in expandStrata() in particular).

This is a bit more complicated than I thought it would be because

  1. expandStrata() would need a special Collector to collect new facts into the IndexedSet, and
  2. The facts parameter passed to expandStrata() from expandDatabase() is modified at the end of the loop in expandStrata().

I can use a method like this to make the type of stream configurable:

private <T> Stream<T> stream(Collection<T> c) {
	return (useParallel)?c.parallelStream():c.stream();
}

I've decided against arithmetic built-in predicates, such as plus(X,Y,Z) => X + Y = Z, for now:

  • Arithmetic predicates aren't that simple. They should be evaluated as soon as the input variables (X and Y) in this case becomes available, so that Z can be computed and bound for the remaining goals.
  • Arithmetic expressions would require a more complex parser and there would be a need for Expr to have child Expr objects to build a parse tree. The parse tree would be simpler if the terms of Expr was a List<Object> - see my note below.

It is conceptually possible to make the List<String> terms of Expr a List<Object> instead, so that you can store complex Java objects in the database (as POJOs).

The isVariable() method will just have to be modified to check whether its parameter is instanceof String and starts with an upper-case character, the bindings will become a Map<String, Object>, the result of query() will be a List<Map<String, Object>> and a couple of toString() methods will have to be modified.

It won't be that useful a feature if you just use the interpreter, but it could be a nice-to-have if you use the fluent API. I don't intend to implement it at the moment, though.

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