Tim@CIS.UPENN.EDU (Tim Finin) (10/29/86)
Dissertation Defense
Aid To Database Design: An Inductive
Inference Approach
Sitaram Lanka
The conventional approach to the design of databases has the drawback that
to specify a database schema, it requires the user interested in designing a
schema to have the knowledge about both the domain and the data model. The
aim of this research is to propose a semi automated system which designs a
database schema in which the user need only have the knowledge of the
underlying domain. This is expressed in terms of the information retrieval
requirements that the database has to satisfy eventually. We have cast this
as a problem in inductive inference where the input is in the form of
Natural Language English queries. A database schema is inferred from this
and is expressed in the functional data model.
The synthesis of the database schema from the input queries is carried out
by an inference mechanism. The central idea in designing the inference
mechanism is the notion of compositionality and we have described it in
terms of attribute grammars due to Kunth. A method has been proposed to
detect any potentially false hypothesis that the inference mechanism may put
forth and we have proposed a scheme to refine them such that we will obtain
acceptable hypothesis. A prototype has been implemented on the Symbolics
Lisp machine.
Committee
Dr. P. Buneman
Dr. T. Finin (chairman)
Dr. R. Gerritsen Supervisor
Dr. A.K. Joshi Supervisor
Dr. R.S. Nikhil
Dr. B. Webber
Date: October 31, 1986
Time: 2:30 pm
Location: Room 23