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arXiv:2607.26356cs.DB

Revisiting the Algebraic Foundation of Relational Data

Yisu Remy Wang, Paul Talma

Abstract

We revisit Tarski's Algebra of Relations (TAR), an old formalism of relations predating Codd's relational algebra by over 100 years, as a new foundation for relational databases. We argue TAR provides a better abstraction at both the semantic level and the physical level, in the context of modern application code and system architecture. To demonstrate the strengths of TAR, we design and implement Prela, a compositional and controllable query language, and show that queries written in Prela are concise, clear, and efficient.

arXiv comments
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DOI
Subjects
cs.DBDatabases

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Linked by 2 identifiable commenters in 3 comments across 2 threads, from Aug 2026 to Aug 2026.

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Discussed in comments2 threads

  1. A better SQL in 11 lines of code 2 comments

    • 1. Yes 2. No. Prela’s speedup is largely due to indexing. We tried to port the same indexing tricks back to duckdb but it wouldn’t let us. See the paper [1] for details 3. Prela focuses on analytical queries at least for now [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.26356

      remywangView on HNParent context

    • Compositionality is hard to show with a small example because it really only comes through at scale. If anyone can point me to a huge SQL query, I’ll take it up as a challenge to rewrite in Prela! Prela’s semantics is based on an algebra of binary relations (unfortunately called…

      remywangView on HNParent context

  2. What if SELECT, FROM, WHERE were functions? 1 comment

    • Got it! One more question if I may: in https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.26356, all the JOB queries are around a second or less, if I read correctly. My understanding is the query: movie .with(keyword.eq("my-kw")) .select(title) is inlined to something by the compiler approximately…

      brofView on HNParent context

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