Task Set 3 (Query Language & Graphs)

The objective of this task set is to:

  • allow programmers to combine table processing functions in a flexible way
  • create a separation between what functions do and how they are implemented. This is helpful for a number of reasons:
    • integration of new table functionality later on
    • continuous code upgrade (new algorithms for different table processing functions can be implemented without altering the rest of the project)
    • debugging and testing

You will implement a query language which represents a variety of table transformations, some of which you have already implemented as table functions. A Query is sequence (in some cases, a combination) of such transformations. You will also implement an evaluation function which performs a Query on a given table.

The query language to be implemented is shown below:

data Query =
    FromCSV CSV
    | ToCSV Query
    | AsList String Query
    | Sort String Query
    | ValueMap (Value -> Value) Query
    | RowMap (Row -> Row) [String] Query
    | VUnion Query Query
    | HUnion Query Query
    | TableJoin String Query Query
    | Cartesian (Row -> Row -> Row) [String] Query Query
    | Projection [String] Query
    | forall a. FEval a => Filter (FilterCondition a) Query
    | Graph EdgeOp Query
 
-- where EdgeOp is defined:
type EdgeOp = Row -> Row -> Maybe Value
 

Don't worry about Graph or Filter queries yet.

Prerequisite

Add the following lines at the beginning of your .hs files:

{-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification #-}
{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-}

The first line allows forall a. The second allows instance FEval String.

While most queries take a Table and return a transformed Table, there are some queries which evaluate to a String or a list of String. Thus we define the type: QResult which describes any of these three possible query result types:

data QResult = CSV CSV | Table Table | List [String]
-- don't confuse first 'CSV' and second 'CSV': first refers to constructor name,
-- second refers to type CSV (defined in taskset 1); same with 'Table'.

Task 3.1.: Enroll QResult in class Show. For Table, use write_csv (see task set X). For List and String, use default.

instance Show QResult where
    ...

In order to ensure separation between queries and their evaluation (!?! is it so?) we define class Eval, which offers function eval. Your job is to enroll Query in this class.

class Eval a where
    eval :: a -> QResult
 
instance Eval Query where
    ...

We explain below how each data constructor from Query should be evaluated:

  1. FromCSV str: converts string str to a Table.
  2. ToCSV query: converts a table obtained from the evaluation of query to a String in CSV format.
  3. AsList colname query: returns values from column colname as a list.
  4. Sort colname query: sorts table by column colname.
  5. ValueMap op query: maps all values from table, using op.
  6. RowMap op colnames query: maps all rows from table, using op.
  7. VUnion query1 query2: vertical union of the 2 tables obtained through the evaluations of query1 and query2.
  8. HUnion query1 query2: horizontal union of the 2 tables.
  9. TableJoin colname query1 query2: table join with respect to column colname.
  10. Cartesian op colnames query1 query2: cartesian product.
  11. Projection colnames query: extract specified columns from table.

You may have noticed that filter query is commented-out. You can uncomment it at this stage. Filtering will receive a special treatment. Because filter conditions are usually complex, instead of performing successive filter queries it is better to build complex query conditions. For this reason, we define type FilterCondition a, illustrated below:

data FilterCondition a =
    Eq String a |
    Lt String a |
    Gt String a |
    In String [a] |
    FNot (FilterCondition a) |
    FieldEq String String

Remark: the type FilterCondition a is polymorphic because such conditions may be expressed over (in this homework) two types:

  • Float and
  • String

We briefly explain what each condition expresses:

  1. Eq colname ref: checks if value from column colname is equal to ref.
  2. Lt colname ref: checks if value from column colname is less than ref.
  3. Gt colname ref: checks if value from column colname is greater than ref.
  4. In colname list: checks if value from column colname is in list.
  5. FNot cond: negates condition.
  6. FieldEq colname1 colname2: checks if values from columns colname1 and colname2 are equal.

FilterCondition Evaluation

A FilterCondition must evaluate to an actual filtering function, which has type:

type FilterOp = Row -> Bool

Since such filtering functions work differently for FilterCondition Float and FilterCondition String, we need a class FEval which contains function feval. The latter is used to evaluate a FilterCondition a to a function of type FilterOp. In order to do so, feval needs to have information about column names (the table head), hence it's type is shown below.

class FEval a where
    feval :: [String] -> (FilterCondition a) -> FilterOp

Task 3.x.: Your task is to write the instances for (FEval Float) and (FEval String).

instance FEval Float where
    ...
instance FEval String where
    ...

Now you can write the evaluation for the data constructor Filter query (see function eval from the previous section).

A graph is a special kind of table which has precisely the following column names: [“From”, “To”, “Value”]. Each row defines a weighted edge between node From and node To.

The query Graph edgeop query: creates such a table starting from the result of the evaluation of query. Suppose the query evaluates to a table T.

  • The nodes are the rows in table T.
  • The weight of an edge between 2 nodes is given by edgeop, which returns a Maybe Value. If edgeop row1 row2 returns Nothing, then we don't have an edge between those 2 nodes. If it returns Just val then we have an edge between row1 and row2 of weight val.
  • In the resulting table, each row describes an edge between node_i and node_j and will have the values:
    • “From” = first column from node_i
    • “To” = first column from node_j
    • “Value” = edgeop node_i node_j

The edge node_i-node_j is the same as node_j-node_i, so it should only appear once (graphs are unoriented). “From” value should be lexicographically before “To”.

Example: Suppose T is the table shown below:

Name      Grade      Class
Mihai     9          321
Andrei    8          322
Stefan    10         321
Ana       9          322

If we would like to build a graph that connects all students in the same class, then:

edgeop [_,_,z] [_,_,c] 
   | z == c = Just c
   | otherwise = Nothing

and the resulting graph will be:

From      To      Value
Mihai     Stefan  321
Ana       Andrei  322

If we would like to build a graph that connects students with grades equal or with a difference of at least a point, then:

edgeop [_,x,_] [_,y,_] 
   | abs $ (read x :: Int) - (read y :: Int) <= 1 = Just "similar"
   | otherwise = Nothing

and the resulting graph is:

From      To      Value
Andrei    Mihai   similar
Mihai     Stefan  similar
Ana       Mihai   similar
Ana       Andrei  similar
Ana       Stefan  similar

Similarities graph, using queries

We want to check the similarities between students lecture points.

  • For that, we want to obtain a graph where “From” and “To” are students' emails and “Value” is the distance between the 2 students' points.
  • We define the distance between stud1 and stud2 as the sum of questions where they both received the same points. Keep only the rows with distance >= 5.
  • The edges in the resulting graph (the rows in the resulting table) should be sorted by the “Value” column. If email is missing, don't include that entry.

Your task is to write similarities_query as a sequence of queries, that once evaluated results in the graph described above.

Note: similarities_query is a Query. The checker applies eval on it.

  1. Enroll Query in class Eval (without Filter or Graph). 0.3p
  2. Enroll FilterCondition in class FEval and implement eval for Filter query. 0.2p
  3. Implement eval for Graph query. 0.2p
  4. Extract similarity graph. 0.3p

Deadline: 16.05, 23:50. Vmchecker: TBA.