A Potpourri of Reason Maintenance Methods

We present novel methods to compute changes to materialized views in logic databases like those used by rule-based reasoners. Such reasoners have to address the problem of changing axioms in the presence of materializations of derived atoms. Existing approaches have drawbacks: some require to generate and evaluate large transformed programs that are in Datalog - while the source program is in Datalog and significantly smaller; some recompute the whole extension of a predicate even if only a small part of this extension is affected by the change. The methods presented in this article overcome these drawbacks and derive additional information useful also for explanation, at the price of an adaptation of the semi-naive forward chaining

A Comparative Study of the Application of Different Learning Techniques to Natural Language Interfaces

In this paper we present first results from a comparative study. Its aim is to test the feasibility of different inductive learning techniques to perform the automatic acquisition of linguistic knowledge within a natural language database interface. In our interface architecture the machine learning module replaces an elaborate semantic analysis component. The learning module learns the correct mapping of a user's input to the corresponding database command based on a collection of past input data. We use an existing interface to a production planning and control system as evaluation and compare the results achieved by different instance-based and model-based learning algorithms.Comment: 10 pages, to appear CoNLL9

Constrained set-up of the tGAP structure for progressive vector data transfer

A promising approach to submit a vector map from a server to a mobile client is to send a coarse representation first, which then is incrementally refined. We consider the problem of defining a sequence of such increments for areas of different land-cover classes in a planar partition. In order to submit well-generalised datasets, we propose a method of two stages: First, we create a generalised representation from a detailed dataset, using an optimisation approach that satisfies certain cartographic constraints. Second, we define a sequence of basic merge and simplification operations that transforms the most detailed dataset gradually into the generalised dataset. The obtained sequence of gradual transformations is stored without geometrical redundancy in a structure that builds up on the previously developed tGAP (topological Generalised Area Partitioning) structure. This structure and the algorithm for intermediate levels of detail (LoD) have been implemented in an object-relational database and tested for land-cover data from the official German topographic dataset ATKIS at scale 1:50 000 to the target scale 1:250 000. Results of these tests allow us to conclude that the data at lowest LoD and at intermediate LoDs is well generalised. Applying specialised heuristics the applied optimisation method copes with large datasets; the tGAP structure allows users to efficiently query and retrieve a dataset at a specified LoD. Data are sent progressively from the server to the client: First a coarse representation is sent, which is refined until the requested LoD is reached

Distributed top-k aggregation queries at large

Top-k query processing is a fundamental building block for efficient ranking in a large number of applications. Efficiency is a central issue, especially for distributed settings, when the data is spread across different nodes in a network. This paper introduces novel optimization methods for top-k aggregation queries in such distributed environments. The optimizations can be applied to all algorithms that fall into the frameworks of the prior TPUT and KLEE methods. The optimizations address three degrees of freedom: 1) hierarchically grouping input lists into top-k operator trees and optimizing the tree structure, 2) computing data-adaptive scan depths for different input sources, and 3) data-adaptive sampling of a small subset of input sources in scenarios with hundreds or thousands of query-relevant network nodes. All optimizations are based on a statistical cost model that utilizes local synopses, e.g., in the form of histograms, efficiently computed convolutions, and estimators based on order statistics. The paper presents comprehensive experiments, with three different real-life datasets and using the ns-2 network simulator for a packet-level simulation of a large Internet-style network