| Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania (2007) | |||||||||||||||
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| I am indebted to Val Tannen, my advisor. This dissertation would not have been possible without his invaluable ideas, support, and advice. His deep insight into both fields of databases and programming languages, as well as his crucial advice in the experimental issues, made direct contributions to this work. I have learned a great deal from him: where to look for ideas, how to solve problems, how to present them. I also have learned from him that most rewarding results are obtained by taking the path of investigating the foundations, even though this may not be the shortest path. I am very grateful to Peter Buneman and Susan Davidson, for their help, support, advice, suggestions and encouragement. I am thankful to Alin Deutsch who was always a source of inspiration. Many ideas coming from fruitful discussions with him have entered in this dissertation. I would like to give special thanks to Arnaud Sahuguet who always provided me with valuable suggestions and comments, as well as with expert help regarding system and implementation issues. I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee for their insightful comments, suggestions, | |||||||||||||||
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