"Incremental computation represents a transformative (!) approach to data processing. Instead of recomputing everything when your input changes slightly, incremental computation aims to reuse the original output and efficiently update the results. Efficiently means performing work proportional only to input and output changes."

"This paper introduces DBSP, a programming language inspired by signal processing (hence the name DB-SP). DBSP is simple, yet it offers extensive computational capabilities. With just four operators, it covers complex database queries, including entire relational algebra, set and multiset computations, nested relations, aggregations, recursive queries, and streaming computations."

The four operators are "lift", "delay", "differentiation", and "integration". "Lift" converts scalar functions to stream functions, "delay" shifts stream values, "differentiation" computes stream changes, and integration reconstructs original streams from change streams. Integration and differentiation are inverses of each other.

DBSP: Automatic incremental view maintenance for rich query languages

#solidstatelife #computerscience #informationtheory #databases