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Interpretable Table Model (ITM)

The Interpretable Table Model (ITM) is the formal model that pyRegTab uses to represent a document table at two complementary levels: a syntactic layer that captures the raw structure, formatting, and content of cells, and a semantic layer that records the items derived from those cells together with the interpretation actions that relate items to one another and ultimately to a structured recordset.

A table represented as a complete ITM instance (both layers populated) can be automatically interpreted to extract a recordset conforming to a target schema.


Syntactic layer

The syntactic layer L_syn = (C, P) consists of a finite set of cells C and a set of cell properties P = P_layout ∪ P_format ∪ P_content.

Layout hierarchy

ITM organises a table as a row-oriented hierarchy of nested substructures:

Table
└── Subtable+       (one or more consecutive groups of rows)
    └── Row+        (one or more consecutive rows)
        └── Subrow+ (one or more consecutive column slices per row)
            └── Cell+

Each cell c ∈ C occupies a unique position pos(c) = (row(c), col(c)) in the row-column grid. Merged cells from the source document are normalised: a distinct cell object is created for each covered grid position, with the formatting and content of the original merged cell replicated in every copy. The original bounding box is preserved in the bbox(c) property so that the merge geometry is not lost.

API mapping — syntactic layer

Definition (Syntactic layer): L_syn = (C, P) where C is the finite set of cells and P = P_layout ∪ P_format ∪ P_content.

Formal concept Python class / field
Cell set C TableSyntax — cells accessed via cell(row, col)
Primary position pos(c) = (row, col) Cell.row(), Cell.col()
Merged-cell bounding box bbox(c) Cell.bbox() → BoundingBox
Merge flag merg(c) Cell.isMerged()
Subtable membership subtable(c) Cell.subtable() → Subtable
Subrow membership subrow(c) Cell.subrow() → Subrow

Substructure hierarchy traversal:

Formal concept Python
Subtable set ST TableSyntax.subtables() → List<Subtable>
Row set (within subtable) Subtable.rows() → List<Row>
Subrow set SR Row.subrows() → List<Subrow>
Cell set (within subrow) Subrow.cells() → List<Cell>

Formatting properties

Each cell carries a set of formatting properties:

Property Values
fntFamily SERIF, SANS_SERIF, MONOSPACED
fntBold, fntItalic, fntStrikeout, fntUnderline Boolean
horzAlign LEFT, CENTER, RIGHT, JUSTIFY
vertAlign TOP, CENTER, BOTTOM, JUSTIFY
ltBorder, tpBorder, rtBorder, bmBorder Boolean (presence of each border edge)
bgColor, fgColor RGB triple in [0, 255]³
rotat Angle in [0°, 360°)

Content properties

Property Description
txt Raw text of the cell (possibly empty)
txtBlank true when the text is empty or whitespace-only
txtMultiline true when the text spans multiple lines
txtIndent Number of leading spaces
API mapping — formatting and content
Formal property Python accessor
fntFamily Cell.fontFamily() → FontFamily (SERIF / SANS_SERIF / MONOSPACED)
fntBold, fntItalic, fntStrikeout, fntUnderline Cell.isBold(), Cell.isItalic(), …
horzAlign Cell.horzAlign() → HorizontalAlignment
vertAlign Cell.vertAlign() → VerticalAlignment
ltBorder, tpBorder, rtBorder, bmBorder Cell.hasLeftBorder(), Cell.hasTopBorder(), …
bgColor, fgColor Cell.bgColor(), Cell.fgColor() → CellColor
txt Cell.text()
txtBlank Cell.isBlank()

Semantic layer

The semantic layer L_sem = (I_tbl, I_ctx, A) adds interpretive meaning to the syntactic structure. It is absent in a freshly loaded table and is populated by the matching process (see Table patterns (ATP)).

Items

An item is the atomic unit of information in the semantic layer. There are two kinds:

Cell-derived item — a triple (s, u⃗, i) where s is a string extracted or transformed from the source cell text, u⃗ is a (possibly empty) sequence of user-defined tags, and i is the zero-based index of the item within the cell. Every cell-derived item is permanently associated with exactly one cell; a single cell may yield one or more items (e.g. when its text is split by a delimiter).

Context-derived item — a string constant s supplied from the external context (constants, dictionary entries, etc.) rather than from any cell.

Each item belongs to exactly one of three item types:

Type Symbol Role
Value-associated VAL Atomic data value (number, date, string, …)
Attribute-associated ATTR Symbolic name for a semantic role
Auxiliary AUX Supporting information used during interpretation
API mapping — items

Definition (Semantic layer): L_sem = (I_tbl, I_ctx, A) where I_tbl is the set of cell-derived items, I_ctx is the set of context-derived items, and A is the set of interpretation actions.

Formal concept Python class / method
Cell-derived item (s, u⃗, i) CellDerivedItem
String str(ι) CellDerivedItem.str()
Tags tags(ι) CellDerivedItem.tags()
Index pos(ι) CellDerivedItem.index()
Source cell cell(ι) CellDerivedItem.cell()
Item type (VAL / ATTR / AUX) CellDerivedItem.type() → ItemType
Context-derived item s ContextDerivedItem
Semantic layer container L_sem TableSemantics

Item providers

An item provider retrieves a sequence of items that are relevant to a given anchor item at interpretation time. Two families exist:

Cell-derived item provider Υ(τ, κ, J, k) — parameterised by:

  • a traversal order τ ∈ {→, ←, ↓, ↑} (row-major, reverse row-major, column-major, reverse column-major);
  • a filter condition κ(ι_anch, ι_cand) — a Boolean combination of spatial and content constraints on the candidate item relative to the anchor;
  • a target item set J ⊆ I_tbl (VAL, ATTR, or AUX items);
  • a cardinality k ∈ ℕ ∪ {∞} — the maximum number of items to return.

The provider returns the first k items of J ∖ {ι_anch} that satisfy κ, sorted by τ.

Three standard instances are recognised:

Instance Anchor type Target set J k
Υ_val — value-associated provider VAL VAL items k (any)
Υ_attr — attribute-associated provider VAL ATTR items 1
Υ_aux — auxiliary provider VAL or ATTR all items k (any)

Context-derived item provider — always returns the same fixed sequence of context-derived items regardless of the anchor, effectively injecting a constant into the computation.

API — ProviderSpec

Item filter condition: a predicate κ : I_tbl × I_tbl → {false, true} taking an anchor item and a candidate item.

Concept Python
Filter condition κ ItemFilterCondition (functional interface), ItemFilterConditionSpec (structured)
Filter Φ_κ(ι_anch, J) ItemFilter.filter(anchor, items)
Cell-derived provider spec S_prov = (ipt, k, τ, κ) ProviderSpec (record: cardinality, traversalOrder, filterCondition, targetItemKind)
Cardinality k ProviderSpec.cardinality() — use ProviderSpec.UNBOUNDED for ∞
Traversal order τ ProviderSpec.traversalOrder() → TraversalOrder (ROW_MAJOR / REVERSE_ROW_MAJOR / COLUMN_MAJOR / REVERSE_COLUMN_MAJOR)
Typed VAL provider Υ_tbl^val ProviderSpec.val(…)
Typed ATTR provider Υ_tbl^attr ProviderSpec.attr(…) — always cardinality 1
Typed AUX provider Υ_tbl^aux ProviderSpec.aux(…)
Unrestricted provider ProviderSpec.any(…)
Context-derived provider ProviderSpec.ctx_attr(text), ProviderSpec.ctx_val(text), ProviderSpec.ctx_aux(text)
Runtime provider ItemProvider (functional: provide(anchor))

Compound conditions: ItemFilterConditionSpec.and(terms…) → (c1 & c2 & …); ItemFilterConditionSpec.or(groups…) → (g1 | g2 | …).

API — Filter terms (FilterTerm)

These implement the atomic constraints of filter condition κ and mirror the RTL spatConstr / contConstr tokens.

FilterTerm RTL token Condition
SameSubtable ST same_subtable(a) && !same_cell(a)
SameSubrow SR same_subrow(a) && !same_cell(a)
SameSubcol SC same_subcol(a) && !same_cell(a)
SameCell CL same_cell(a)
NotSameCell NCL !same_cell(a)
SameRow ROW same_row(a) && !same_cell(a)
SameCol COL same_col(a) && !same_cell(a)
RightOf RT same_subrow(a) && col > col(a)
LeftOf LT same_subrow(a) && col < col(a)
Below BW same_subcol(a) && row > row(a)
Above AV same_subcol(a) && row < row(a)
ColExact(n) Cn col == n
ColOffset(d) C+n / C-n col == col(a) + d
ColRange(f,t) C+n..m col(a)+f ≤ col ≤ col(a)+t
ColAbsoluteRange(lo,hi) Clo..hi lo ≤ col ≤ hi
RowExact(n) Rn row == n
RowOffset(d) R+n / R-n row == row(a) + d
PosExact(n) Pn index == n
PosOffset(d) P+n / P-n index == index(a) + d
PosRange(lo,hi) Plo..hi lo ≤ index ≤ hi
RegexMatched(pat) "pat" str.matches(pat)
NotRegexMatched(pat) !"pat" !str.matches(pat)
Contains(sub) ~"sub" str.contains(sub)
NotContains(sub) !~"sub" !str.contains(sub)
Blank BLANK blankStr()
NotBlank !BLANK !blankStr()
Tagged(tags) TAG #t1 #t2 any tag matches (OR)
NotTagged(tags) !TAG #t1 #t2 no tag matches
SameStr STR sameStr(a)

Working state and update operations

During interpretation, semantic information is accumulated in a working state (V, A, val, attr, avp, rec, J):

  • V ⊆ Σ* — the set of values;
  • A ⊆ Σ⁺ — the set of attributes;
  • val(ι) — maps each VAL item to a value in V;
  • attr(ι) — maps each ATTR item to an attribute in A;
  • avp(ι) — partial map from VAL items to (attribute, value) pairs;
  • rec(ι) — partial map from cell-derived VAL items to a non-empty sequence of item-based records (each a sequence of VAL items); a single record until a join multiplies it;
  • J ⊆ dom(rec) — the joined-away anchors: items whose records were consumed by a join. They stay in rec (a later join may consume the same records again) but are excluded from recordset extraction; dom*(rec) = dom(rec) \ J are the live anchors.

Seven working-state update operations populate or modify the working state:

Operation Symbol Effect
Fill O_fill^δ Replaces the anchor's value/attribute with the concatenation (delimited by δ) of the provider items' strings
Prefix O_prefix^δ Prepends provider strings (joined by δ) to the anchor's value/attribute
Suffix O_suffix^δ Appends provider strings (joined by δ) to the anchor's value/attribute
AVP construction O_avp Creates an attribute-value pair (attr(ι₁), val(ι_anch)) for the anchor VAL item using the single ATTR item ι₁ returned by the provider
Record construction O_rec Creates an item-based record with the anchor VAL item as its first element and the provided VAL items as the remaining elements
Record concatenation O_concat^K Folds previously created records into one wide record under the anchor: the key positions K (at which all records must agree) are not repeated; the concatenated anchors are removed from dom(rec). A named attribute shared by two records (apart from the key) is a precondition violation: no effect, a diagnostic is recorded
Record join O_join^K The record product: every record of the anchor is combined with every record of the provided anchors — a cross product for K = ∅, an equi-join on the key positions K otherwise; a shared named attribute is a natural-join condition (kept once if the values agree, the pair is dropped otherwise). The provided anchors are added to J
API mapping — WorkingState

Definition (Working state): ws = (V, A, val, attr, avp, rec, J).

Formal component Python
Value set V ⊆ Σ* WorkingState.allVal() → Map<Item, String>
Attribute set A ⊆ Σ⁺ WorkingState.allAttr() → Map<Item, String>
val(ι) WorkingState.val(item)
attr(ι) WorkingState.attr(item)
avp(ι) WorkingState.avp(item) → AttributeValuePair(attribute, value)
rec(ι) WorkingState.rec(item) → the records of the anchor (a list of item sequences), also for joined-away anchors
J WorkingState.all_joined(), WorkingState.is_joined(item)
dom*(rec) = dom(rec) \ J WorkingState.live_anchors() — the live anchors only, in insertion order; this is what recordset extraction sees
Derived assoc(ι) WorkingState.assoc(item) — attribute of avp(ι), or null

Seven working-state update operations:

Formal operation Python factory Anchor type
O_fill^δ WorkingState.applyFill(anchor, items, delimiter) VAL or ATTR
O_prefix^δ WorkingState.applyPrefix(anchor, items, delimiter) VAL or ATTR
O_suffix^δ WorkingState.applySuffix(anchor, items, delimiter) VAL or ATTR
O_avp WorkingState.applyAvp(anchor, items) VAL
O_rec WorkingState.applyRec(anchor, items) cell-derived VAL
O_concat^K WorkingState.apply_concat(anchor, items, key) cell-derived VAL
O_join^K WorkingState.apply_join(anchor, items, key) cell-derived VAL

A violated precondition of O_concat^K / O_join^K has no effect and is recorded as a Diagnostic (surfaced as TableInterpreter.diagnostics()); TableInterpreter.with_strict_preconditions(True) raises a RuntimeError instead. The interpreter also reports, through the same channel, the "not applicable" cases of an explicit CONCAT/JOIN — one written on the anchor's own content spec: an anchor without a record (anchor has no record — REC missing?) and provided items none of which has a record. Inherited actions (actSpecs of a table/subtable/row/subrow scope) reach anchors that were never meant to carry records, so for them these cases are routine and stay silent. An anchor whose record was folded away by an earlier concatenation is routine as well: the working state keeps such anchors in the set C (is_concatenated, all_concatenated), the counterpart of J for O_concat.

Implementation note — named keys. The manuscript defines K over positions only (K ⊆ ℕ₀). The implementation additionally accepts key attribute names (RecordKey: positions and/or names; RTL CONCAT(0, 'A'), JOIN('Year')). A name is resolved per record, through assoc, to the position of the item carrying that attribute; drop_K and compat_K then apply to the resolved positions, so the semantics of the operations is unchanged — a named key is a position-independent way of writing the same K.

Consistency predicates:

Predicate Python factory
Basic consistency: ρ[0] = ι for every ρ ∈ rec(ι), and avp(ι) = (a,v) ⟹ val(ι) = v WorkingState.isConsistent()
Recordset-consistency over the live anchors: uniform anchor attribute + distinct attributes in every record WorkingState.is_recordset_consistent()

Interpretation actions

An interpretation action (ι_anch, π⃗, o) combines:

  • an anchor item ι_anch;
  • a sequence of item providers π⃗ = ⟨π₁, …, πₙ⟩ that supply the operand items;
  • a working-state update operation o.

When executed, the action first collects a concatenated item sequence ι⃗ = π₁(ι_anch) · … · πₙ(ι_anch), then applies o to the working state with ι_anch as the anchor and ι⃗ as the operand sequence.

Actions must be consistent: the provider types and resulting item counts must satisfy the constraints of the chosen operation (Tab. I in the paper):

Action subset Anchor type Provider type |ι⃗|
String modification VAL or ATTR (cell-derived) any ≥ 1
AVP construction VAL (cell- or context-derived) ATTR provider = 1
Record construction VAL (cell-derived) VAL providers ≥ 0
Record concatenation VAL (cell-derived) VAL providers (cell-derived) ≥ 1
Record join VAL (cell-derived) VAL providers (cell-derived) ≥ 1
API — ActionSpec

Action spec: S_act = (op, ⟨S_prov¹, …, S_provⁿ⟩) where op is a working-state update operation.

Operation Python factory Effect
REC ActionSpec.rec(providers…) Anchor item → record; providers supply the remaining fields
AVP ActionSpec.avp(provider) Associates a VAL item (anchor) with an ATTR item from the provider
CONCAT ActionSpec.concat(*providers) Folds the provided records into the anchor's record (K=∅)
CONCAT(K) ActionSpec.concat(*providers, key=0), key="A", key=(0, 1, "A"), key=RecordKey.of(…) Same, key K (positions and/or attribute names) not repeated (e.g. key=0 drops the anchor position of each provided record)
JOIN ActionSpec.join(*providers) Record product: one record per (anchor record × provided record)
JOIN(K) ActionSpec.join(*providers, key=0), key="k" Equi-join on the key K (positions and/or attribute names)
FILL ActionSpec.fill(delimiter, providers…) Fills anchor value using provider values
PREFIX ActionSpec.prefix(delimiter, providers…) Prepends provider values to the anchor
SUFFIX ActionSpec.suffix(delimiter, providers…) Appends provider values to the anchor
AVP with literal ActionSpec.avp("ATTR_NAME") Context-derived ATTR constant

ActionSpec.rec(int anchorPos, providers…) adds an AnchorAttributeAtPosition post-processing step (RTL: REC(n)) — it moves the anchor attribute, name and values together, to position anchorPos of the schema. ActionSpec.rec(String splitDelimiter, providers…) adds a DelimitedFieldSplit step (RTL: REC('s')).


Recordset and schema

Definition (Recordset): given a schema S = ⟨a₁, …, aₙ⟩, a record is an n-tuple ⟨(a₁,v₁), …, (aₙ,vₙ)⟩; a recordset is a finite multiset of records — as in the relational model, the order of records is not part of the result, whereas duplicates are. Implementations materialize a recordset as a sequence (e.g. for CSV export); pyRegTab, like the reference implementation, emits records in the order in which their anchors were visited during working state completion and, for an anchor carrying several records after a join, in the nested-loop order of the join. This order is a documented default, not a guarantee of the model.

API mapping — Schema, Record, Recordset
Formal concept Python class / method
Schema S = ⟨a₁, …, aₙ⟩ Schema — attributes() → List<String>
Record ⟨(a₁,v₁), …, (aₙ,vₙ)⟩ Record — get(attribute), get(index)
Recordset Recordset — schema(), records(), size(), get(index)

Table interpretation

Given a fully populated ITM instance (both layers), table interpretation proceeds in four sequential phases.

Phase 1 — Working state initialisation

An initial working state ws₀ is constructed directly from the semantic layer:

  • each VAL item is assigned its value val(ι) ∈ V;
  • each ATTR item is assigned its attribute attr(ι) ∈ A;
  • dom(avp), dom(rec) and J are initialised to empty.

Phase 2 — Working state completion

The interpretation actions A are applied to ws₀ in a fixed order:

  1. String-modification actions (O_fill, O_prefix, O_suffix);
  2. AVP-construction actions (O_avp);
  3. Record-construction actions (O_rec);
  4. Record-concatenation actions (O_concat) — records are folded …
  5. Record-join actions (O_join) — … before they are multiplied.

Within each phase, actions are applied in traversal order over their anchor items. The default strategy visits anchors in row-major order (row-first, Γ_row); a column-first strategy Γ_col is also available.

The result is the completed working state ws_comp.

Phase 3 — Recordset extraction

Recordset extraction from ws_comp has two steps.

Schema construction collects the set of named attributes that appear across all item-based records:

  1. Determine the anchor attribute a₁: if any anchor item has an associated attribute (via avp), all such anchors share the same attribute by a consistency invariant, and that attribute becomes a₁; otherwise a fresh anonymous attribute is generated for position 1.
  2. Visit all non-anchor items in the order defined by the schema construction strategy (default: record-first Γ_rec, which visits items record by record; position-first Γ_pos groups items by their position across records). Each new named attribute encountered is appended to the schema S = ⟨a₁, a₂, …, aₙ⟩; unnamed items receive a fresh anonymous attribute for their position.

Record generation iterates over the live anchors dom*(rec) = dom(rec) \ J in the order in which record-construction actions were applied, and over the records ρ ∈ rec(ι) of each anchor (several after a join):

  • For each record ρ, initialise all n field values to a missing value (via an optional user-defined handler μ; default: ⊥).
  • For each item ι' in ρ that has an associated attribute in S, fill in val(ι') at the corresponding position.
  • Emit the resulting record ⟨(a₁, v₁), …, (aₙ, vₙ)⟩.

Phase 4 — Recordset transformation

The extracted recordset may be further post-processed by optional operations:

  • Schema reordering — rearranges the columns of the schema according to a user-defined order.
  • Field splitting — splits a field that contains a delimited value (e.g. "v1/v2/v3") into multiple atomic fields using the same delimiter as the string-modification operations.
  • Whitespace normalisation — trims leading and trailing whitespace and collapses internal whitespace to a single space across all values.
API mapping — TableInterpreter

TableInterpreter.interpret(table) executes all four phases.

Phase Entry point
1 — Working state initialisation initWorkingState(sem) (private)
2 — Working state completion completeWorkingState(ws, actions) (private)
3 — Recordset extraction extractRecordset(ws) → constructSchema + generateRecords
4 — Recordset transformation transformRecordset(recordset)

Strategies and options (all configurable via TableInterpreter.with*(…)):

Option Python type Values
Action application strategy Γ_row / Γ_col ActionApplicationStrategy ROW_FIRST (default), COLUMN_FIRST
Schema construction strategy Γ_rec / Γ_pos SchemaConstructionStrategy RECORD_FIRST (default), POSITION_FIRST
Anonymous attribute template String Pattern with %i placeholder; default "$a_%i"
Missing value handler μ MissingValueHandler Functional interface; default returns null

Recordset transformations (RecordsetTransformation sealed interface):

Transformation Python class RTL / API trigger
Schema reordering SchemaReordering explicit attribute list
Delimited field split DelimitedFieldSplit ActionSpec.rec(String delimiter, …) — RTL REC('s')
Field splitting FieldSplitting explicit split spec
Whitespace normalisation WhitespaceNormalization with_transformations(…)
Anchor attribute at position AnchorAttributeAtPosition ActionSpec.rec(int pos, …) — RTL REC(n) / <ANCH(n)>; moves the anchor attribute (name with its values) to position pos, preserving every attribute-value binding

End-to-end example

This section traces the full lifecycle of a concrete table through ITM. The Table patterns (ATP) page shows the ATP pattern and the syntactic matching step that precede interpretation.

Source table

Consider a 3 × 3 table t₀ listing the number of airline departures from airports in certain months. Its first row contains an empty cell followed by two airline codes; each remaining row contains an airport code followed by two cells each containing a departure count and a month name separated by a space:

(empty) CA HU
IKT 0 Jan 8 Feb
SVO 31 Jan 40 Feb

Target schema: S = ⟨ND, AIRLINE, AIRPORT, MON⟩.

Items derived from the table

After syntactic matching, the following cell-derived items (all VAL) are created and added to I_tbl^val (subscripts denote row, column; superscripts denote index within the cell):

Cell Items
c(0,1) ι(0,1) = "CA"
c(0,2) ι(0,2) = "HU"
c(1,0) ι(1,0) = "IKT"
c(1,1) ι(1,1)⁰ = "0", ι(1,1)¹ = "Jan"
c(1,2) ι(1,2)⁰ = "8", ι(1,2)¹ = "Feb"
c(2,0) ι(2,0) = "SVO"
c(2,1) ι(2,1)⁰ = "31", ι(2,1)¹ = "Jan"
c(2,2) ι(2,2)⁰ = "40", ι(2,2)¹ = "Feb"

The cell c(0,0) is matched by a skip cell pattern — no item is derived.

Four context-derived ATTR items are also created from string constants embedded in the action specifications: α(ND), α(AIRLINE), α(AIRPORT), α(MON).

Working state completion

AVP-construction actions (O_avp) assign an attribute to every VAL item:

Item avp
ι(0,1) (AIRLINE, "CA")
ι(0,2) (AIRLINE, "HU")
ι(1,0) (AIRPORT, "IKT")
ι(2,0) (AIRPORT, "SVO")
ι(1,1)⁰ (ND, "0")
ι(1,2)⁰ (ND, "8")
ι(2,1)⁰ (ND, "31")
ι(2,2)⁰ (ND, "40")
ι(1,1)¹ (MON, "Jan")
ι(1,2)¹ (MON, "Feb")
ι(2,1)¹ (MON, "Jan")
ι(2,2)¹ (MON, "Feb")

Record-construction actions (O_rec) build four item-based records. The anchor of each record is a departure-count item; the remaining fields are collected by three providers: same column (airline), same row (airport), same cell (month):

Anchor rec(anchor)
ι(1,1)⁰ ⟨ι(1,1)⁰, ι(0,1), ι(1,0), ι(1,1)¹⟩ → ⟨"0", "CA", "IKT", "Jan"⟩
ι(1,2)⁰ ⟨ι(1,2)⁰, ι(0,2), ι(1,0), ι(1,2)¹⟩ → ⟨"8", "HU", "IKT", "Feb"⟩
ι(2,1)⁰ ⟨ι(2,1)⁰, ι(0,1), ι(2,0), ι(2,1)¹⟩ → ⟨"31", "CA", "SVO", "Jan"⟩
ι(2,2)⁰ ⟨ι(2,2)⁰, ι(0,2), ι(2,0), ι(2,2)¹⟩ → ⟨"40", "HU", "SVO", "Feb"⟩

Extracted recordset

Schema construction collects the attributes in the order they appear across records (record-first strategy), yielding S = ⟨ND, AIRLINE, AIRPORT, MON⟩. Record generation produces:

ND AIRLINE AIRPORT MON
0 CA IKT Jan
8 HU IKT Feb
31 CA SVO Jan
40 HU SVO Feb