Conjunctive Queries with Free Access Patterns Under Updates

Abstract

We study the problem of answering conjunctive queries with free access patterns under updates. A free access pattern is a partition of the free variables of the query into input and output. The query returns tuples over the output variables given a tuple of values over the input variables. We introduce a fully dynamic evaluation approach for such queries. We also give a syntactic characterisation of those queries that admit constant time per single-tuple update and whose output tuples can be enumerated with constant delay given an input tuple. Finally, we chart the complexity trade-off between the preprocessing time, update time and enumeration delay for such queries. For a class of queries, our approach achieves optimal, albeit non-constant, update time and delay. Their optimality is predicated on the Online Matrix-Vector Multiplication conjecture. Our results recover prior work on the dynamic evaluation of conjunctive queries without access patterns.