Similarity and bisimilarity notions appropriate for characterizing indistinguishability in fragments of the calculus of relations

Abstract

Motivated by applications in databases, this article considers various fragments of the calculus of binary relations. The fragments are obtained by leaving out, or keeping in, some of the standard operators, along with some derived operators such as set difference, projection, coprojection and residuation. For each considered fragment, a characterization is obtained for when two given binary relational structures are indistinguishable by expressions in that fragment. The characterizations are based on appropriately adapted notions of simulation and bisimulation.