{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"How Not to Say \"NIL\": Improving Answers to Failing Queries in Data Base Systems","authors":[{"name":"Jürgen M. Janas","slug":"jurgen-m-janas","given":"Jürgen M.","family":"Janas","affiliation":"Hochschule der Bundeswehr Milnchen Fachbereich Informatik Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39 D-8o14 Neubiberg , Germany; Institut fur Informatik der Technischen UniversitAt Milnchen."}],"abstract":"If a data base query fails, i.e., if the required information is not available, then current data base management systems normally report this failure but do not provide a possible deeper reason for this failure. In this paper, a method is introduced by means of which for any query expressed in a predicate calculus based language the actual reasons for a failure may be detected; this is done by recursively inferring related queries from a failing query until no more failing queries are found, the queries obtained by this process then determine the desired answer to the original query. The method may be combined with an arbitrary query evaluation strategy and requires a minimum of additional computation. It is a good means to clear the dialog between a user and the data base system of unnecessary queries and thus contributes t~ the usefulness and efficiency of the user interface.","doi":null,"url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1979/94","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1979/0094.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1979/94.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1979/bibtex/94","volume":{"slug":"1979","title":"Proceedings of the Sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 1979","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1979/","year":1979,"location":"Tokyo, Japan","dates":"August 20-23, 1979","editors":"Bruce G. Buchanan","isbn":"","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence","doi_prefix":""},"section":null,"track":"","number":94,"pages":{"first":null,"last":null},"keywords":[],"videos":[],"references":[{"position":1,"raw":"Codd, E .F. \"A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks.\" Communications ACM 13:6 (197o) 377-387","title":"A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks","authors":"E F Codd","year":null,"venue":"Communications ACM","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":2,"raw":"2J Codd, E .F. \"A Database Sublanguage Founded on the Relational Calculus.\" In Proc. 1971 SIGFIDET Workshop. ACM, New York~1-,--- pp. 35-68","title":"A Database Sublanguage Founded on the Relational Calculus","authors":"E F Codd","year":null,"venue":"Proc. 1971 SIGFIDET Workshop","doi":null,"url":null,"internal_url":null},{"position":3,"raw":"Hobbs, J. R. and Robinson, J. 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