Re: Conditional Tables in Postgres

Hi Mubashir,

> ... researching on using databases to implement network control
infrastructure. ...
> Are there any postgres extensions/features that implement conditional
tables

like this?

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3472716.3472848 "Sarasate: a strong
representation system for networking policies"
*"Policy information in computer networking today is hard to manage. This
is in sharp contrast to relational data structured in a database that
allows easy access. In this demonstration, we ask why cannot (or how can)
turn network policies into relational data. Our key observation is that
oftentimes a policy does not prescribe a single ``definite'' network state,
but rather is an ``incomplete'' description of all the legitimate network
states. Based on this idea, we adopt conditional tables and the usual SQL
interface (a relational structure developed for incomplete database) as a
means to represent and query sets of network states in exactly the same way
as a single definite network snapshot. More importantly, like relational
tables that improve data productivity and innovation, relational policies
allow us to extend a rich set of data mediating methods to address the
networking problem of coordinating policies in a distributed environment."*

As I see the source code is:
https://github.com/ravel-net/Faure/blob/main/apps/README_sarasate.md
And it is a* [ PL/python3u extension + Z3-solver (Z3 API in Python) ]*
solution.
Probably easy to reimplement in
- PL/Julia ( https://gitlab.com/pljulia/pljulia ) + Z3 API in Julia (
https://github.com/ahumenberger/Z3.jl )

IMHO: if you have a favorite Python/R/Julia library in this topic - you can
easily integrate it with PostgreSQL.

Regards,
Imre

Mubashir Anwar <mubashir(dot)anwar1998(at)gmail(dot)com> ezt írta (időpont: 2021. okt.
14., Cs, 21:41):

>
> Hi!
>
> I am a PhD student, researching on using databases to implement network
> control infrastructure. For this purpose, I wanted to use conditional
> tables <http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~grahne/papers/conditional.pdf> in
> databases, which allow representing unknown values in a DB with conditions
> over tuples. However, I could not find any DBMS that supports them. Are
> there any postgres extensions/features that implement conditional tables? I
> wanted to confirm by asking here in case I missed something in my search.
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Best,
> Mubashir
>