Functorial data migration

DOI10.1016/J.IC.2012.05.001MaRDI QIDQ714735zbMATH OpenOpenAlexDBLPWikidataFDO

Authors David I. Spivak

Publication date 11 October 2012

Published in Information and Computation (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1166

zbMATH Keywords

category theory databases adjoint functors queries data migration

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Database theory (68P15) Functional programming and lambda calculus (68N18)

Abstract: In this paper we present a simple database definition language: that of categories and functors. A database schema is a small category and an instance is a set-valued functor on it. We show that morphisms of schemas induce three "data migration functors", which translate instances from one schema to the other in canonical ways. These functors parameterize projections, unions, and joins over all tables simultaneously and can be used in place of conjunctive and disjunctive queries. We also show how to connect a database and a functional programming language by introducing a functorial connection between the schema and the category of types for that language. We begin the paper with a multitude of examples to motivate the definitions, and near the end we provide a dictionary whereby one can translate database concepts into category-theoretic concepts and vice-versa.

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