Lecture 07:

Relational Algebra

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 Outline
• Relational Algebra (Section 6.1)

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 Relational Algebra
• Formalism for creating new relations from
existing ones
• Its place in the big picture:

Declarative
Declarative
query
query Algebra
Algebra Implementation
Implementation
language
language

SQL, Relational algebra

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relational calculus
 Relational Algebra
• Five operators:
– Union: 
– Difference: -
– Selection:
– Projection: 
– Cartesian Product: 
• Derived or auxiliary operators:
– Intersection, complement
– Joins (natural,equi-join, theta join, semi-join)
– Renaming:

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 1. Union and 2. Difference

• R1  R2
Example:
– ActiveEmployees  RetiredEmployees

• R1 – R2
Example:
– AllEmployees − RetiredEmployees

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 What about Intersection ?
• It is a derived operator
R1  R2 = R1 – (R1 – R2)

• Also expressed as a join (will see later)

Example
– UnionizedEmployees  RetiredEmployees

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 3. Selection
• Returns all tuples which satisfy a condition
• Notation: c(R)
• Examples
–  Salary > 40000 (Employee)
–  name = “Smith” (Employee)
• The condition c can be =, <, , >, , <>

[in SQL: SELECT * FROM Employee

WHERE Salary > 40000]
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Selection Example

Employee
SSN Name DepartmentID Salary
999999999 John 1 30,000
777777777 Tony 1 32,000
888888888 Alice 2 45,000
Find all employees with salary more than $40,000.
 (Employee)
Salary > 40000

SSN Name DepartmentID Salary

888888888 Alice 2 45,000

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 4. Projection
• Eliminates columns, then removes duplicates
• Notation: A1,…,An (R)
• Example: project to social-security number and
names:
–  SSN, Name (Employee)
– Output schema: Answer(SSN, Name)

[In SQL: SELECT DISTINCT SSN, Name FROM Employee]

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Projection Example

Employee
SSN Name DepartmentID Salary
999999999 John 1 30,000
777777777 Tony 1 32,000
888888888 Alice 2 45,000
 SSN, Name (Employee)
SSN Name
999999999 John
777777777 Tony
888888888 Alice

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 5. Cartesian Product
• Combine each tuple in R1 with each tuple in R2
• Notation: R1  R2
• Example:
– Employee  Dependents
• Very rare in practice; mainly used to express
joins

[In SQL: SELECT * FROM R1, R2]

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Cartesian Product Example

Employee
Name SSN
John 999999999
Tony 777777777

Dependents
EmployeeSSN Dname
999999999 Emily
777777777 Joe

Employee x Dependents
Name SSN EmployeeSSN Dname
John 999999999 999999999 Emily
John 999999999 777777777 Joe
Tony 777777777 999999999 Emily
Tony 777777777 777777777 Joe
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 Relational Algebra
• Five operators:
– Union: 
– Difference: -
– Selection:
– Projection: 
– Cartesian Product: 
• Derived or auxiliary operators:
– Intersection, complement
– Joins (natural,equi-join, theta join, semi-join)
– Renaming:

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 Renaming
• Changes the schema, not the instance
• Schema: R(A1, …, An )
• Notation:  B1,…,Bn (R)
• Example:
– LastName, SocSocNo (Employee)
– Output schema: Answer(LastName, SocSocNo)

[in SQL: SELECT Name AS LastName, SSN AS SocSocNo

FROM Employee]
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Renaming Example

Employee
Name SSN
John 999999999
Tony 777777777

LastName, SocSocNo (Employee)

LastName SocSocNo
John 999999999
Tony 777777777
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 Natural Join
• Notation: R1 ⋈ R2

• Meaning: R1 ⋈ R2 = A(C(R1  R2))

• Where:
– The selection C checks equality of all common attributes
– The projection eliminates the duplicate common
attributes
[in SQL: SELECT DISTINCT R1.A, R1. B, R2.C FROM R1, R2
WHERE R1.B = R2.B
Schema: R1(A,B), R2(B,C)]

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 Natural Join Example
Employee
Name SSN
John 999999999
Tony 777777777

Dependents
SSN Dname
999999999 Emily
777777777 Joe
Employee Dependents =
Name, SSN, Dname( SSN=SSN2(Employee x SSN2, Dname(Dependents))
Name SSN Dname
John 999999999 Emily
Tony 777777777 Joe
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 Natural Join
• R= A B S= B C
X Y Z U
X Z V W
Y Z Z V
Z V

A B C
• R ⋈ S= X Z U
X Z V
Y Z U
Y Z V
Z V W 18
 Natural Join
• Given the schemas R(A, B, C, D), S(A, C, E),
what is the schema of R ⋈ S ?

• Given R(A, B, C), S(D, E), what is R ⋈ S ?

• Given R(A, B), S(A, B), what is R ⋈ S ?

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 Theta Join
• A join that involves a predicate
• R1 ⋈  R2 =   (R1  R2)
• Here can be any condition

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 Eq-join
• A theta join where is an equality
R1 ⋈A=B R2 = A=B (R1  R2)
• Example:
– Employee ⋈SSN=SSN Dependents

• Most useful join in practice

(difference to natural join?)
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 Semijoin
• R ⋉ S =  A1,…,An (R ⋈ S)
• Where A1, …, An are the attributes in R
• Example:
– Employee ⋉ Dependents

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 Semijoins in Distributed
Databases
• Semijoins are used in distributed databases
Dependents
Employee
SSN Dname Age
SSN Name ... ...
... ... network

Employee
Employee ⋈⋈ssn=ssn
ssn=ssn
(
( (Dependents))
age>71 (Dependents))
age>71

T =  SSN age>71 (Dependents)

R = Employee ⋉ T
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Answer = R ⋈ Dependents
 Complex RA Expressions
 name

buyer-ssn=ssn

pid=pid

seller-ssn=ssn

 ssn  pid
name=fred name=gizmo

Person Purchase Person Product 24

 Application:
Query Rewriting for Optimization
sname

sname

bid=100 rating > 5

sid=sid

sid=sid (Scan; (Scan;

write to bid=100 rating > 5 write to
temp T1) temp T2)

Reserves Sailors Reserves Sailors

The earlier we process selections, less tuples we need to manipulate

higher up in the tree (predicate pushdown)
Disadvantages?
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 Algebraic Laws (Examples)
• Commutative and Associative Laws
– R ∩ S = S ∩ R, R ∩ (S ∩ T) = (R ∩ S) ∩ T
– R S = S R, R (S T) = (R S) T
     
• Laws involving selection
–  C AND C’(R) =  C( C’(R)) =  C(R) ∩  C’(R)
–  C (R S) =  C (R) S
• When C
involves only attributes
 of R
• Laws involving projections
– M(N(R)) = M,N(R)
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 Operations on Bags
A bag = a set with repeated elements
All operations need to be defined carefully on bags
• {a,b,b,c}{a,b,b,b,e,f,f}={a,a,b,b,b,b,b,c,e,f,f}
• {a,b,b,b,c,c} – {b,c,c,c,d} = {a,b,b,d}
• C(R): preserve the number of occurrences
• A(R): no duplicate elimination
• Cartesian product, join: no duplicate elimination
Important ! Relational Engines work on bags, not sets !
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 Finally: RA has Limitations !
• Cannot compute “transitive closure”
Name1 Name2 Relationship

Fred Mary Father

Mary Joe Cousin

Mary Bill Spouse

Nancy Lou Sister

• Find all direct and indirect relatives of Fred

• Cannot express in RA !!! Need to write C program
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 Formulating queries in RA
• Consider a database for student enrollment
for courses, and books used in the courses
– STUDENT (SSN, Name, Major, Bdate)
– COURSE (Course#, Cname, Dept)
– ENROLL (SSN, Course#, Quarter, Grade)
– BOOK_ADOPTION (Course#, Quarter, Book_ISBN)
– TEXT (Book_ISBN, Book_Title, Publisher, Author)

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 Formulating queries in RA
• Specify the following queries in relational
algebra
– List the number of courses (Course#) taken by all
students named ‘John Smith’ in Winter 1999 (i.e.,
Quarter = W99)
– List any department which has all its adopted books
published by ‘BC Publishing’

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 Formulating Queries in RA
 Course# (Quarter=W99 ((Name= ‘John Smith’ (STUDENT) ⋈
ENROLL))
 OtherDept = Dept ((Publisher <> ‘PS Publishers’
(BOOK_ADOPTION ⋈ TEXT)) ⋈ COURSE)
AllDept = Dept (BOOK_ADOPTION ⋈ COURSE) WHY?
Answer = AllDept - OtherDept

 And how will you express it in SQL?

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