Novel Model for the Computation of Linguistic Hedges in Database Queries

Most query languages are designed to retrieve information from databases containing precise and certain data using precisely specified commands. Due to the advancements in various kinds of data repositories in the recent years, there is a steep increase in complex queries. Most of the complex Queries are uncertain and vague. The existing Structured Query Language exhibits its inefficiency in handling these complex Queries. This paper proposes a model to handle the complexities by using fuzzy set theory. In this model, the Fuzzy Query with linguistic hedges is converted into Crisp Query, by deploying an application layer over the Structured Query Language

Intelligent query for real estate search

The purpose of this project is to improve search query accuracy in a real estate website by developing an intelligent query system which provides the best matching result for standard search criteria. This intelligent query website utilizes fuzzy logic and partial membership to filter query results based on user input data. Fuzzy logic helps obtain results that are otherwise not attainable from a non-fuzzy search. A non-fuzzy search entails search results that match exactly with the given criteria. This project also allows a user to do a free keyword search. This type of search uses synonyms of the keywords to query for houses. The resulting information will be more credible and precise than the traditional website because it provides a reasonable result, of the specified search, to the user

Querying and managing complex networks

Orientador: André SantanchèTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Compreender e quantificar as propriedades emergentes de redes naturais e de redes construídas pelo homem, tais como cadeias alimentares, interações sociais e infra-estruturas de transporte é uma tarefa desafiadora. O campo de redes complexas foi desenvolvido para agregar medições, algoritmos e técnicas para lidar com tais tópicos. Embora as pesquisas em redes complexas tenham sido aplicadas com sucesso em várias áreas de atividade humana, ainda há uma falta de infra-estruturas comuns para tarefas rotineiras, especialmente aquelas relacionadas à gestão de dados. Por outro lado, o campo de bancos de dados tem se concentrado em questões de gestão de dados desde o seu início, há várias décadas. Sistemas de banco de dados, no entanto, oferecem suporte reduzido à análise de redes. Para prover um melhor suporte para tarefas de análise de redes complexas, um sistema de banco de dados deve oferecer recursos de consulta e gerenciamento de dados adequados. Esta tese defende uma maior integração entre as áreas e apresenta nossos esforços para atingir este objetivo. Aqui nós descrevemos o Sistema de Gerenciamento de Dados Complexos (CDMS), que permite consultas exploratórias sobre redes complexas através de uma linguagem de consulta declarativa. Os resultados da consulta são classificados com base em medições de rede avaliadas no momento da consulta. Para suportar o processamento de consultas, nós introduzimos a Beta-álgebra, que oferece um operador capaz de representar diversas medições típicas de análise de redes complexas. A álgebra oferece oportunidades para otimizações transparentes de consulta baseadas em reescritas, propostas e discutidas aqui. Também introduzimos o mecanismo mapper de gestão de relacionamentos, que está integrado à linguagem de consulta. Os mecanismos de consulta e gerenciamento de dados flexíveis propostos são também úteis em cenários além da análise de redes complexas. Nós demonstramos o uso do CDMS em aplicações tais como integração de dados institucionais, recuperação de informação, classificação e recomendação. Todos os aspectos da proposta foram implementadas e testados com dados reais e sintéticosAbstract: Understanding and quantifying the emergent properties of natural and man-made networks such as food webs, social interactions, and transportation infrastructures is a challenging task. The complex networks field was developed to encompass measurements, algorithms, and techniques to tackle such topics. Although complex networks research has been successfully applied to several areas of human activity, there is still a lack of common infrastructures for routine tasks, especially those related to data management. On the other hand, the databases field has focused on mastering data management issues since its beginnings, several decades ago. Database systems, however, offer limited network analysis capabilities. To enable a better support for complex network analysis tasks, a database system must offer adequate querying and data management capabilities. This thesis advocates for a tighter integration between the areas and presents our efforts towards this goal. Here we describe the Complex Data Management System (CDMS), which enables explorative querying of complex networks through a declarative query language. Query results are ranked based on network measurements assessed at query time. To support query processing, we introduce the Beta-algebra, which offers an operator capable of representing diverse measurements typical of complex network analysis. The algebra offers opportunities for transparent query optimization through query rewritings, proposed and discussed here. We also introduce the mapper mechanism for relationship management, which is integrated in the query language. The flexible query language and data management mechanisms are useful in scenarios other than complex network analysis. We demonstrate the use of the CDMS in applications such as institutional data integration, information retrieval, classification and recommendation. All aspects of the proposal are implemented and have been tested with real and synthetic dataDoutoradoCiência da ComputaçãoDoutor em Ciência da Computação2012/15988-9FAPESPCAPE

Discovery and application of data dependencies

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Eduardo Cunha de AlmeidaTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Exatas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Informática. Defesa : Curitiba, 08/09/2020Inclui referências: p. 126-140Área de concentração: Ciência da ComputaçãoResumo: D ependências de dados (ou, simplesmente, dependências) têm um papel fundamental em muitos aspectos do gerenciam ento de dados. Em consequência, pesquisas recentes têm desenvolvido contribuições para im portante problem as relacionados à dependências. Esta tese traz contribuições que abrangem dois desses problemas. O prim eiro problem a diz respeito à descoberta de dependências com alto poder de expressividade. O objetivo é substituir o projeto m anual de dependências, o qual é sujeito a erros, por um algoritmo capaz de descobrir dependências a partir de dados apenas. N esta tese, estudamos a descoberta de restrições de negação, um tipo de dependência que contorna muitos problemas relacionados ao poder de expressividade de depêndencias. As restrições de negação têm poder de expressividade suficiente para generalizar outros tipos importantes de dependências, e expressar com plexas regras de negócios. No entanto, sua descoberta é com putacionalm ente difícil, pois possui um espaço de busca m aior do que o espaço de busca visto na descoberta de dependências mais simples. Esta tese apresenta novas técnicas na forma de um algoritmo para a descoberta de restrições de negação. Avaliamos o projeto de nosso algoritmo em uma variedade de cenários: conjuntos de dados reais e sintéticos; e núm eros variáveis de registros e colunas. N ossa avaliação m ostra que, em com paração com soluções do estado da arte, nosso algoritmo m elhora significativamente a eficiência da descoberta de restrição de negação em term os de tempo de execução. O segundo problem a diz respeito à aplicação de dependências no gerenciam ento de dados. Primeiro, estudamos a aplicação de dependências na melhoraria da consistência de dados, um aspecto crítico da qualidade dos dados. Uma m aneira comum de m odelar inconsistências é identificando violações de dependências. N esse contexto, esta tese apresenta um m étodo que estende nosso algoritm o para a descoberta de restrições de negação de form a que ele possa retornar resultados confiáveis, m esm o que o algoritm o execute sobre dados contendo alguns registros inconsistentes. M ostram os que é possível extrair evidências dos conjuntos de dados para descobrir restrições de negação que se mantêm aproximadamente. Nossa avaliação mostra que nosso método retorna dependências de negação que podem identificar, com boa precisão e recuperação, inconsistências no conjunto de dados de entrada. Esta tese traz mais um a contribuição no que diz respeito à aplicação de dependências para m elhorar a consistência de dados. Ela apresenta um sistem a para detectar violações de dependências de form a eficiente. Realizam os um a extensa avaliação de nosso sistem a usando comparações com várias abordagens; dados do mundo real e sintéticos; e vários tipos de restrições de negação. Mostramos que os sistemas de gerenciamento de banco de dados comerciais testados com eçam a apresentar baixo desem penho para conjuntos de dados relativam ente pequenos e alguns tipos de restrições de negação. Nosso sistema, por sua vez, apresenta execuções até três ordens de magnitude mais rápidas do que as de outras soluções relacionadas, especialmente para conjuntos de dados maiores e um grande número de violações identificadas. N ossa contribuição final diz respeito à aplicação de dependências na otim ização de consultas. Em particular, esta tese apresenta um sistema para a descoberta automática e seleção de dependências funcionais que potencialmente melhoram a execução de consultas. Nosso sistema com bina representações das dependências funcionais descobertas em um conjunto de dados com representações extraídas de cargas de trabalho de consulta. Essa com binação direciona a seleção de dependências funcionais que podem produzir reescritas de consulta para as consultas de entrada. N ossa avaliação experim ental m ostra que nosso sistem a seleciona dependências funcionais relevantes que podem ajudar na redução do tempo de resposta geral de consultas. Palavras-chave: Perfilamento de dados. Qualidade de dados. Limpeza de dados. Depenência de dados. Execução de consulta.Abstract: Data dependencies (or dependencies, for short) have a fundamental role in many facets of data management. As a result, recent research has been continually driving contributions to central problem s in connection w ith dependencies. This thesis makes contributions that reach two of these problems. The first problem regards the discovery of dependencies of high expressive power. The goal is to replace the error-prone process of m anual design of dependencies with an algorithm capable of discovering dependencies using only data. In this thesis, we study the discovery of denial constraints, a type of dependency that circumvents many expressiveness drawbacks. Denial constraints have enough expressive pow er to generalize other im portant types of dependencies and to express com plex business rules. However, their discovery is com putationally hard since it regards a search space that is bigger than the search space seen in the discovery of sim pler dependencies. This thesis introduces novel algorithm ic techniques in the form of an algorithm for the discovery of denial constraints. We evaluate the design of our algorithm in a variety of scenarios: real and synthetic datasets; and a varying num ber of records and columns. Our evaluation shows that, com pared to state-of-the-art solutions, our algorithm significantly improves the efficiency of denial constraint discovery in terms of runtime. The second problem concerns the application of dependencies in data management. We first study the application of dependencies for improving data consistency, a critical aspect of data quality. A com m on way to m odel data inconsistencies is by identifying violations of dependencies. in that context, this thesis presents a m ethod that extends our algorithm for the discovery of denial constraints such that it can return reliable results even if the algorithm runs on data containing some inconsistent records. A central insight is that it is possible to extract evidence from datasets to discover denial constraints that alm ost hold in the dataset. Our evaluation shows that our method returns denial dependencies that can identify, with good precision and recall, inconsistencies in the input dataset. This thesis makes one m ore contribution regarding the application of dependencies for im proving data consistency. it presents a system for detecting violations of dependencies efficiently. We perform an extensive evaluation of our system that includes comparisons with several different approaches; real-world and synthetic data; and various kinds of denial constraints. We show that the tested com m ercial database m anagem ent systems start underperform ing for relatively small datasets and production dependencies in the form of denial constraints. Our system, in turn, is up to three orders-of-m agnitude faster than related solutions, especially for larger datasets and massive numbers of identified violations. Our final contribution regards the application of dependencies in query optimization. In particular, this thesis presents a system for the automatic discovery and selection of functional dependencies that potentially improve query executions. Our system combines representations from the functional dependencies discovered in a dataset with representations of the query workloads that run for that dataset. This combination guides the selection of functional dependencies that can produce query rewritings for the incoming queries. Our experimental evaluation shows that our system selects relevant functional dependencies, which can help in reducing the overall query response time. Keywords: D ata profiling. D ata quality. D ata cleaning. D ata dependencies. Query execution

Engines of Order

Over the last decades, and in particular since the widespread adoption of the Internet, encounters with algorithmic procedures for ‘information retrieval’ – the activity of getting some piece of information out of a col-lection or repository of some kind – have become everyday experiences for most people in large parts of the world

Artificial general intelligence: Proceedings of the Second Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, AGI 2009, Arlington, Virginia, USA, March 6-9, 2009

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) research focuses on the original and ultimate goal of AI – to create broad human-like and transhuman intelligence, by exploring all available paths, including theoretical and experimental computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, and innovative interdisciplinary methodologies. Due to the difficulty of this task, for the last few decades the majority of AI researchers have focused on what has been called narrow AI – the production of AI systems displaying intelligence regarding specific, highly constrained tasks. In recent years, however, more and more researchers have recognized the necessity – and feasibility – of returning to the original goals of the field. Increasingly, there is a call for a transition back to confronting the more difficult issues of human level intelligence and more broadly artificial general intelligence

Proceedings of the 2004 ONR Decision-Support Workshop Series: Interoperability

In August of 1998 the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center (CADRC) of the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly), approached Dr. Phillip Abraham of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) with the proposal for an annual workshop focusing on emerging concepts in decision-support systems for military applications. The proposal was considered timely by the ONR Logistics Program Office for at least two reasons. First, rapid advances in information systems technology over the past decade had produced distributed collaborative computer-assistance capabilities with profound potential for providing meaningful support to military decision makers. Indeed, some systems based on these new capabilities such as the Integrated Marine Multi-Agent Command and Control System (IMMACCS) and the Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES) had already reached the field-testing and final product stages, respectively. Second, over the past two decades the US Navy and Marine Corps had been increasingly challenged by missions demanding the rapid deployment of forces into hostile or devastate dterritories with minimum or non-existent indigenous support capabilities. Under these conditions Marine Corps forces had to rely mostly, if not entirely, on sea-based support and sustainment operations. Particularly today, operational strategies such as Operational Maneuver From The Sea (OMFTS) and Sea To Objective Maneuver (STOM) are very much in need of intelligent, near real-time and adaptive decision-support tools to assist military commanders and their staff under conditions of rapid change and overwhelming data loads. In the light of these developments the Logistics Program Office of ONR considered it timely to provide an annual forum for the interchange of ideas, needs and concepts that would address the decision-support requirements and opportunities in combined Navy and Marine Corps sea-based warfare and humanitarian relief operations. The first ONR Workshop was held April 20-22, 1999 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in San Luis Obispo, California. It focused on advances in technology with particular emphasis on an emerging family of powerful computer-based tools, and concluded that the most able members of this family of tools appear to be computer-based agents that are capable of communicating within a virtual environment of the real world. From 2001 onward the venue of the Workshop moved from the West Coast to Washington, and in 2003 the sponsorship was taken over by ONR’s Littoral Combat/Power Projection (FNC) Program Office (Program Manager: Mr. Barry Blumenthal). Themes and keynote speakers of past Workshops have included: 1999: ‘Collaborative Decision Making Tools’ Vadm Jerry Tuttle (USN Ret.); LtGen Paul Van Riper (USMC Ret.);Radm Leland Kollmorgen (USN Ret.); and, Dr. Gary Klein (KleinAssociates) 2000: ‘The Human-Computer Partnership in Decision-Support’ Dr. Ronald DeMarco (Associate Technical Director, ONR); Radm CharlesMunns; Col Robert Schmidle; and, Col Ray Cole (USMC Ret.) 2001: ‘Continuing the Revolution in Military Affairs’ Mr. Andrew Marshall (Director, Office of Net Assessment, OSD); and,Radm Jay M. Cohen (Chief of Naval Research, ONR) 2002: ‘Transformation ... ’ Vadm Jerry Tuttle (USN Ret.); and, Steve Cooper (CIO, Office ofHomeland Security) 2003: ‘Developing the New Infostructure’ Richard P. Lee (Assistant Deputy Under Secretary, OSD); and, MichaelO’Neil (Boeing) 2004: ‘Interoperability’ MajGen Bradley M. Lott (USMC), Deputy Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command; Donald Diggs, Director, C2 Policy, OASD (NII