Probabilistic Reasoning With Facts and Rules in Deductive Databases

In this paper we present a new method for probabilistic reasoning with true facts and uncertain rules within a deductive database. Besides a cautious approach to inferences on uncertain rules, we show a default approach for uncertainty reasoning including factual knowledge, based on the ideas of maximal context and detachment. Integrated into a database these approaches support many important applications with probabilistic value dependencies. One sample application will be provided: Lead quali cation within a marketing database. 1