Algorithms for generation of path-methods in object-oriented databases

A path-method is a mechanism in object-oriented databases (OODBs) to retrieve or to update information relevant to one class that is not stored with that class but with some other class. A path-method is a method which traverses from one class through a chain of connections between classes to access information at another class. However, it is a difficult task for a user to write path-methods, because it might require comprehensive knowledge of many classes of the conceptual schema, while a typical user has often incomplete or even inconsistent knowledge of the schema. This dissertation proposes an approach to the generation of path-methods in an OODB to solve this problem. We have developed the Path-Method Generator (P MG) system, which generates path-methods according to a naive user\u27s requests. PMG is based on access weights which reflect the relative frequency of the connections and precomputed access relevance between every pair of classes of the OODB computed from access weights of the connections. We present specific rules for access weight assignment, efficient algorithms to compute access relevance in a single OODB, and a variety of traversal algorithms based on access weights and precomputed access relevance. Experiments with a university environment OODB and a sample of path-methods identify some of these algorithms as very successful in generating most of the desired path-methods. Thus, the PMG system is an efficient tool for aiding the user with the difficult task of querying and updating a large OODB. The path-method generation in an interoperable multi object-oriented database (IM-OODB) is even more difficult than for a single OODB, since a user has to be familiar with several OODBs. We use a hierarchical approach for deriving efficient online algorithms for the computation of access relevance in an IM-OODB, based on precomputed access relevance for each autonomous OODB. In an IM-OODB the access relevance is used as guide in generating path-methods between the classes of different OODBs

Query processing in temporal object-oriented databases

This PhD thesis is concerned with historical data management in the context of objectoriented databases. An extensible approach has been explored to processing temporal object queries within a uniform query framework. By the uniform framework, we mean temporal queries can be processed within the existing object-oriented framework that is extended from relational framework, by extending the existing query processing techniques and strategies developed for OODBs and RDBs. The unified model of OODBs and RDBs in UmSQL/X has been adopted as a basis for this purpose. A temporal object data model is thereby defined by incorporating a time dimension into this unified model of OODBs and RDBs to form temporal relational-like cubes but with the addition of aggregation and inheritance hierarchies. A query algebra, that accesses objects through these associations of aggregation, inheritance and timereference, is then defined as a general query model /language. Due to the extensive features of our data model and reducibility of the algebra, a layered structure of query processor is presented that provides a uniforrn framework for processing temporal object queries. Within the uniform framework, query transformation is carried out based on a set of transformation rules identified that includes the known relational and object rules plus those pertaining to the time dimension. To evaluate a temporal query involving a path with timereference, a strategy of decomposition is proposed. That is, evaluation of an enhanced path, which is defined to extend a path with time-reference, is decomposed by initially dividing the path into two sub-paths: one containing the time-stamped class that can be optimized by making use of the ordering information of temporal data and another an ordinary sub-path (without time-stamped classes) which can be further decomposed and evaluated using different algorithms. The intermediate results of traversing the two sub-paths are then joined together to create the query output. Algorithms for processing the decomposed query components, i. e., time-related operation algorithms, four join algorithms (nested-loop forward join, sort-merge forward join, nested-loop reverse join and sort-merge reverse join) and their modifications, have been presented with cost analysis and implemented with stream processing techniques using C++. Simulation results are also provided. Both cost analysis and simulation show the effects of time on the query processing algorithms: the join time cost is linearly increased with the expansion in the number of time-epochs (time-dimension in the case of a regular TS). It is also shown that using heuristics that make use of time information can lead to a significant time cost saving. Query processing with incomplete temporal data has also been discussed

A comprehensive part model and graphical schema representation for object-oriented databases

Part-whole modeling plays an important role in the development of database schemata in data-intensive application domains such as manufacturing, design, computer graphics. text document processing, and so on. Object-oriented databases (OODBs) have been targeted for use in such areas. Thus, it is essential that OODBs incorporate a part relationship as one of their modeling primitives. In this dissertation, we present a comprehensive OODB part model which expands the boundaries of OODB part-whole modeling along three fronts. First, it identifies and codifies new semantics for the OODB part relationship. Second, it provides two novel realizations for part relationships and their associated modeling constructs in the context of OODB data models. Third. it, provides an extensive graphical notation for the development of OODB schemata. The heart of the part model is a part relationship that imposes part-whole interaction on the instances of an OODB. The part relationship is divided into four characteristic dimensions: (1) exclusive/shared. (2) cardinality/ordinality, (3) dependency. and (A) value propagation. The latter forms the basis for the definition of derived attributes in a part hierarchy. To demonstrate the viability of our part model, we present two novel realizations for it in the context of existing OODBs. The first realizes the part relationship as an object class and utilizes only a basic set of OODB constructs. The second realization, an implementation of which is described in this dissertation, uses the unique metaclass mechanism of the VODAK Model Language (VML). This implementation shows that our part model can be incorporated into an existing OODB without having to rewrite a substantial subsystem of the OODB, and it also shows that the VML metaclass facility can indeed support extensions in terms of new semantic relationships. To facilitate the creation of part-whole schemata, we introduce an extensive graphical notation for the part relationship and its associated constructs. This notation complements our more general OODB graphical schema representation which includes symbols for classes, attributes. methods. and a variety of relationships. OO-dini, a graphical schema editor that employs our notation and supports conversion of the graphical schema into textual formats, is also discussed

Grifon: a graphical interface to an object oriented database

The aim of the research outlined in this thesis is to establish what type of interface would be most suitable for object oriented databases. In particular it examines how graphical interface technologies might be used to present the database in a clearer form. In support of the research, a prototype interface system has also been developed to a commercial database to illustrate the practicality of the development of such an interface, and the increased effectiveness of the resultant system. The thesis outlines the features provided by the interface, the benefits accrued from such a system, and the problems associated with its development. Finally, it examines how such a system fits into the current work being carried out in the area of user interaction with databases

Developing techniques for enhancing comprehensibility of controlled medical terminologies

A controlled medical terminology (CMT) is a collection of concepts (or terms) that are used in the medical domain. Typically, a CMT also contains attributes of those concepts and/or relationships between those concepts. Electronic CMTs are extremely useful and important for communication between and integration of independent information systems in healthcare, because data in this area is highly fragmented. A single query in this area might involve several databases, e.g., a clinical database, a pharmacy database, a radiology database, and a lab test database. Unfortunately, the extensive sizes of CMTs, often containing tens of thousands of concepts and hundreds of thousands of relationships between pairs of those concepts, impose steep learning curves for new users of such CMTs. In this dissertation, we address the problem of helping a user to orient himself in an existing large CMT. In order to help a user comprehend a large, complex CMT, we need to provide abstract views of the CMT. However, at this time, no tools exist for providing a user with such abstract views. One reason for the lack of tools is the absence of a good theory on how to partition an overwhelming CMT into manageable pieces. In this dissertation, we try to overcome the described problem by using a threepronged approach. (1) We use the power of Object-Oriented Databases to design a schema extraction process for large, complex CMTs. The schema resulting from this process provides an excellent, compact representation of the CMT. (2) We develop a theory and a methodology for partitioning a large OODI3 schema, modeled as a graph, into small meaningful units. The methodology relies on the interaction between a human and a computer, making optimal use of the human\u27s semantic knowledge and the computer\u27s speed. Furthermore, the theory and methodology developed for the scbemalevel partitioning are also adapted to the object-level of a CMT. (3) We use purely structural similarities for partitioning CMTs, eliminating the need for a human expert in the partitioning methodology mentioned above. Two large medical terminologies are used as our test beds, the Medical Entities Dictionary (MED) and the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), which itself contains a number of terminologies

Evaluation of a fuzzy-expert system for fault diagnosis in power systems

A major problem with alarm processing and fault diagnosis in power systems is the reliance on the circuit alarm status. If there is too much information available and the time of arrival of the information is random due to weather conditions etc., the alarm activity is not easily interpreted by system operators. In respect of these problems, this thesis sets out the work that has been carried out to design and evaluate a diagnostic tool which assists power system operators during a heavy period of alarm activity in condition monitoring. The aim of employing this diagnostic tool is to monitor and raise uncertain alarm information for the system operators, which serves a proposed solution for restoring such faults. The diagnostic system uses elements of AI namely expert systems, and fuzzy logic that incorporate abductive reasoning. The objective of employing abductive reasoning is to optimise an interpretation of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) based uncertain messages when the SCADA based messages are not satisfied with simple logic alone. The method consists of object-oriented programming, which demonstrates reusability, polymorphism, and readability. The principle behind employing objectoriented techniques is to provide better insights and solutions compared to conventional artificial intelligence (Al) programming languages. The characteristics of this work involve the development and evaluation of a fuzzy-expert system which tries to optimise the uncertainty in the 16-lines 12-bus sample power system. The performance of employing this diagnostic tool is assessed based on consistent data acquisition, readability, adaptability, and maintainability on a PC. This diagnostic tool enables operators to control and present more appropriate interpretations effectively rather than a mathematical based precise fault identification when the mathematical modelling fails and the period of alarm activity is high. This research contributes to the field of power system control, in particular Scottish Hydro-Electric PLC has shown interest and supplied all the necessary information and data. The AI based power system is presented as a sample application of Scottish Hydro-Electric and KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation)

The Application of Object-Oriented Views to an Engineering Environment.

With the increasing popularity of object-oriented technology, object-oriented database systems are being used in design environments as central repositories. In this thesis, we investigate the role of versioning and the characteristics of design databases in design environments. In an effort to improve the configuration management scheme in a design environment, we also investigate the use of database views as a possible configuration tool. We propose a unified version management scheme that facilitates cooperative team work and show that the use of database views provides a powerful configuration management scheme for a design environment

An Update Algorithm for Restricted Random Walk Clusters

This book presents the dynamic extension of the Restricted Random Walk Cluster Algorithm by Schöll and Schöll-Paschinger. The dynamic variant allows to quickly integrate changes in the underlying object set or the similarity matrix into the clusters; the results are indistinguishable from the renewed execution of the original algorithm on the updated data set

International Workshop on Description Logics : Bonn, May 28/29, 1994

This collection of papers forms the permanent record of the 1994 Description Logic Workshop, that was held at the Gustav Stresemann Institut in Bonn, Germany on 28 and 29 May 1994, immediately after the Fourth International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. The workshop was set up to be as informal as possible, so this collection cannot hope to capture the discussions associated with the workshop. However, we hope that it will serve to remind participants of their discussion at the workshop, and provide non-participants with indications of the topics that were discussed at the workshop. The workshop consisted of seven regular sessions and one panel session. Each regular session had about four short presentations on a single theme, but also had considerable time reserved for discussion. The themes of the sessions were Foundations of Description Logics, Architecture of Description Logics and Description Logic Systems, Language Extensions, Expanding Description Logics, General Applications of Description Logics, Natural Language Applications of Description Logics, Connections between Description Logics and Databases, and the Future of Description Logics and Description Logic Systems. The session on Foundations of Description Logics concentrated on computational properties of description logics, correspondences between description logics and other formalisms, and on semantics of description logics, Similarly, there is discussion on how to develop tractable desription logics, for some notion of tractable, and whether it is useful to worry about achieving tractability at all. Several of the participants argued in favour of a very expressive description logic. This obviously precludes tractability or even decidability of complete reasoning. Klaus Schild proposed that for some purposes one could employ "model checking" (i .e., a closed world assumption) instead of "theorem proving," and has shown that this is still tractable for very large languages. Maurizio Lenzerini's opinion was that it is important to have decidable languages. Tractability cannot be achieved in several application areas because there one needs very expressive constructs: e.g., axioms, complex role constructors, and cycles with fixed-point semantics. For Bob MacGregor, not even decidability is an issue since he claims that Loom's incomplete reasoner is sufficient for his applications. The discussion addressed the question of whether there is still need for foundations, and whether the work on foundation done until now really solved the problems that the designers of early DL systems had. Both questions were mostly answered in the affirmative, with the caveat that new research on foundations should make sure that it is concerned with "real" problems, and not just generates new problems. In the session on Architecture of Description Logics and Description Logic Systems the participants considered different ways of putting together description logics and description logic systems. One way of doing this is to have a different kind of inference strategy for description logics, such as one based on intuitionistic logics or one based directly on rules of inference-thus allowing variant systems. Another way of modifying description logic systems is to divide them up in different ways, such as making a terminology consist of a schema portion and a view portion. Some discussion in this session concerned whether architectures should be influenced by application areas, or even by particular applications. There was considerable discussion at the workshop on how Description Logics should be extended or expanded to make them more useful. There are several methods to do this. The first is to extend the language of descriptions, e.g ., to represent n-ary relations, temporal information, or whole-part relationships, all of which were discussed at the workshop. The second is to add in another kind of reasoning, such as default reasoning, while still keeping the general framework of description logic reasoning. The third is to incorporate descriptions or description-like constructs in a larger reasoner, such as a first order reasoner. This was the approach taken in OMEGA and is the approach being taken in the Loom project. There have been many extensions of the first two kinds proposed for description logics, including several presented at the workshop. One quest ion discussed at the workshop was whether these extensions fit in well with the philosophy of description logic. Another question was whether the presence of many proposals for extensions means that description logics are easy to expand, or that description logics are inadequate representation formalisms? The general consensus was that description logics adequately capture a certain kind of core reasoning and that they lend themselves to incorporation with other kinds of reasoning. Care must be taken, however, to keep the extended versions true to the goals of description logics. The sessions on Applications of Description Logics had presentations on applications of description logics in various areas, including configuration, tutoring, natural language processing, and domain modeling. Most of these applications are research applications, funded by government research programs. There was discussion of what is needed to have more fielded applications of description logics. The session on Connections between Description Logics and Databases considered three kinds of connections between Description Logics and Databases: 1. using Description Logics for expressing database schemas, including local schemas, integrated schemas, and views, integrity constraints, and queries; 2. using Description Logic reasoning for various database-related reasoning, including schema integration and validation, and query optimization, and query validation and organization; and 3. making Description Logic reasoners more like Database Mangagement Systems via optimization. All three of these connections are being actively investigated by the description logic community. The panel session on the Future of Description Logics and Description Logic Systems discussed where the future of description logics will lie. There seems to be a consensus that description logics must forge tighter connections with other formalisms, such as databases or object-oriented systems. In this way, perhaps, description logics will find more real applications

International Workshop on Description Logics : Bonn, May 28/29, 1994

This collection of papers forms the permanent record of the 1994 Description Logic Workshop, that was held at the Gustav Stresemann Institut in Bonn, Germany on 28 and 29 May 1994, immediately after the Fourth International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. The workshop was set up to be as informal as possible, so this collection cannot hope to capture the discussions associated with the workshop. However, we hope that it will serve to remind participants of their discussion at the workshop, and provide non-participants with indications of the topics that were discussed at the workshop. The workshop consisted of seven regular sessions and one panel session. Each regular session had about four short presentations on a single theme, but also had considerable time reserved for discussion. The themes of the sessions were Foundations of Description Logics, Architecture of Description Logics and Description Logic Systems, Language Extensions, Expanding Description Logics, General Applications of Description Logics, Natural Language Applications of Description Logics, Connections between Description Logics and Databases, and the Future of Description Logics and Description Logic Systems. The session on Foundations of Description Logics concentrated on computational properties of description logics, correspondences between description logics and other formalisms, and on semantics of description logics, Similarly, there is discussion on how to develop tractable desription logics, for some notion of tractable, and whether it is useful to worry about achieving tractability at all. Several of the participants argued in favour of a very expressive description logic. This obviously precludes tractability or even decidability of complete reasoning. Klaus Schild proposed that for some purposes one could employ "model checking" (i .e., a closed world assumption) instead of "theorem proving," and has shown that this is still tractable for very large languages. Maurizio Lenzerini\u27s opinion was that it is important to have decidable languages. Tractability cannot be achieved in several application areas because there one needs very expressive constructs: e.g., axioms, complex role constructors, and cycles with fixed-point semantics. For Bob MacGregor, not even decidability is an issue since he claims that Loom\u27s incomplete reasoner is sufficient for his applications. The discussion addressed the question of whether there is still need for foundations, and whether the work on foundation done until now really solved the problems that the designers of early DL systems had. Both questions were mostly answered in the affirmative, with the caveat that new research on foundations should make sure that it is concerned with "real" problems, and not just generates new problems. In the session on Architecture of Description Logics and Description Logic Systems the participants considered different ways of putting together description logics and description logic systems. One way of doing this is to have a different kind of inference strategy for description logics, such as one based on intuitionistic logics or one based directly on rules of inference-thus allowing variant systems. Another way of modifying description logic systems is to divide them up in different ways, such as making a terminology consist of a schema portion and a view portion. Some discussion in this session concerned whether architectures should be influenced by application areas, or even by particular applications. There was considerable discussion at the workshop on how Description Logics should be extended or expanded to make them more useful. There are several methods to do this. The first is to extend the language of descriptions, e.g ., to represent n-ary relations, temporal information, or whole-part relationships, all of which were discussed at the workshop. The second is to add in another kind of reasoning, such as default reasoning, while still keeping the general framework of description logic reasoning. The third is to incorporate descriptions or description-like constructs in a larger reasoner, such as a first order reasoner. This was the approach taken in OMEGA and is the approach being taken in the Loom project. There have been many extensions of the first two kinds proposed for description logics, including several presented at the workshop. One quest ion discussed at the workshop was whether these extensions fit in well with the philosophy of description logic. Another question was whether the presence of many proposals for extensions means that description logics are easy to expand, or that description logics are inadequate representation formalisms? The general consensus was that description logics adequately capture a certain kind of core reasoning and that they lend themselves to incorporation with other kinds of reasoning. Care must be taken, however, to keep the extended versions true to the goals of description logics. The sessions on Applications of Description Logics had presentations on applications of description logics in various areas, including configuration, tutoring, natural language processing, and domain modeling. Most of these applications are research applications, funded by government research programs. There was discussion of what is needed to have more fielded applications of description logics. The session on Connections between Description Logics and Databases considered three kinds of connections between Description Logics and Databases: 1. using Description Logics for expressing database schemas, including local schemas, integrated schemas, and views, integrity constraints, and queries; 2. using Description Logic reasoning for various database-related reasoning, including schema integration and validation, and query optimization, and query validation and organization; and 3. making Description Logic reasoners more like Database Mangagement Systems via optimization. All three of these connections are being actively investigated by the description logic community. The panel session on the Future of Description Logics and Description Logic Systems discussed where the future of description logics will lie. There seems to be a consensus that description logics must forge tighter connections with other formalisms, such as databases or object-oriented systems. In this way, perhaps, description logics will find more real applications