Data and Knowledge Base Integration

This conference on the integration of data and knowledge bases was organised by the DAKE Centre, an interdisciplinary centre at the University of Keele for research and development in Data and Knowledge Engineering (DAKE). This book contains an invited paper followed by the 14 contributed papers, divided into five categories: integration languages - (2 papers); new directions - (3 papers); prolog and databases - (3 papers); design approaches - (3 papers) applications and tools - (3 papers). Professor Singh's invited paper entitled "Hybrid Knowledge Based Systems for Tactical Decision Making", describes how the different components of a decision support system can be combined together with knowledge bases. The two papers in the language category are "Design and Implementation of DEAL" by Banks et al, and "MPL/O: A strongly-typed multi-paradigm language facility for data/knowledge base programing" by Y.M.Shyy and S.Y.W.Su.
DEAL is an enhancement of the relational model with some ideas borrowed from Prolog and functional languages, for a deductive and recursive capability and also extensibility - as needed for an integrated data/knowledge base processing; in contrast MPLO/O is a requirement specification of an object-oriented approach for the same purpose. The next group on new directions covers a number of divergent topics. The paper "Knowledge-Directed Mediation between Application Objects and Base Data" by Barsalou and Weiderhold proposes a new technique based on the novel concepts of a "mediator" to integrate a heterogeneous collection of data and knowledge bases. The second paper there is on "Constraints and Deduction - Convergent Evolution?" by Bowers and Rawlings, who attempt to show data and knowledge base integration as a convergent evolutionary approach with examples drawn from their work on protein structures. The third paper on "a virtual memory support for deductive database queries" by Greco et al is slightly different, and it proposes a new query processing strategy.
In prolog and databases, the first entitled "a Database Administration Tool, using a Prolog/Oracle coupling" by Lucas and Yip reviews their implementation of Prolog/Oracle coupling and show how this is used for a DBA tool written in Prolog, while the second paper entitled "Combining Prolog with an RDBMS for applications in software configuration management" by Singleton et al discusses algorithms for transitive closures in the Prolog interface to ORACLE, which they have implemented to handle problems of software configuration management. The last paper entitled "Prolog Interface Systems on Distributed Navigational Database Systems" by Takizawa and Katsumata discusses how Prolog is used for both data and knowledge processing, as an interface language to a distributed database system. There are three papers on design methods: the first paper presents an initial case study of a design approach, while the other two propose new techniques for integrated data/knowledge base design.
The first paper "Integrating Expert Systems and Relational Databases: results of an initial case study using a user/task oriented design framework" by Brayshaw et al discusses the findings of the group on their proposed design methodology. The second paper "A Knowledge Assistant for the Design of Information Systems" by Ip and Holden proposes a methodology based on several layers of abstraction, whereas the third paper "Knowledge-based Application - Knowledge Base + Mappings + Applications" by Pun and Kahn concentrates on mapping between applications and knowledge bases. The three papers on the application category are "Digital Switch Representation Underlying a KBS" by Butler et al, "The Generis Knowledge Base Management System - an Exploratory Review" by Kennedy and Crerar, and "Quantitative Evaluation Method for Intelligent Interface to a document Database" by Kinoshita et al. Butler et al proposes a graphical representational technique for digital switches, whereas Kennedy presents an evaluation study of the Generis system based on library application.
In the final paper, Kinoshita et al proposes an evaluation method for a natural language interface to a document retrieval database.