Language-Integrated Updatable Views

Horn, R., Fowler, S. and Cheney, J. (2019) Language-Integrated Updatable Views. In: 31st Symposium on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages (IFL 2019), Singapore, 25-27 Sep 2019, p. 13. ISBN 9781450375627 (doi: 10.1145/3412932.3412945)

Abstract

Relational lenses are a modern approach to the view update problem in relational databases. As introduced by Bohannon et al. [5], relational lenses allow the definition of updatable views by the composition of lenses performing individual transformations. Horn et al. [20] provided the first implementation of incremental relational lenses, which demonstrated that relational lenses can be implemented efficiently by propagating changes to the database rather than replacing the entire database state. However, neither approach proposes a concrete language design; consequently, it is unclear how to integrate lenses into a general-purpose programming language, or how to check that lenses satisfy the well-formedness conditions needed for predictable behaviour. In this paper, we propose the first full account of relational lenses in a functional programming language, by extending the Links web programming language. We provide support for higher-order predicates, and provide the first account of typechecking relational lenses which is amenable to implementation. We prove the soundness of our typing rules, and illustrate our approach by implementing a curation interface for a scientific database application.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Additional Information: This work was supported by ERC Consolidator Grant Skye (grant number 682315) and an ISCF Metrology Fel- lowship grant provided by the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Fowler, Dr Simon
• Authors: Horn, R., Fowler, S., and Cheney, J.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• ISBN: 9781450375627
• Published Online: 15 July 2021
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2020 Association for Computing Machinery
• First Published: First published in 31st Symposium on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages (IFL 2019): 13
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy