The use of database technologies for implementing CBR techniques is attracting
a lot of attention for several reasons. First, the possibility of using
standard DBMS for storing and representing cases significantly reduces
the effort needed to develop a CBR system; in fact, data of interest are
usually already stored into relational databases and used for different
purposes as well. Finally, the use of standard query languages, like SQL,
may facilitate the introduction of a case-based system into the real-world,
by putting retrieval on the same ground of normal database queries. Unfortunately,
SQL is not able to deal with "vague" queries like those needed in a CBR
system, so different approaches have been tried in order to build retrieval
engines able to exploit, at the lower level, standard SQL. In this paper,
we present a proposal where case retrieval is implemented by using a fuzzy
version of SQL. In the presented approach a fuzzy notion of similarity
is adopted and an extended version of SQL, dealing with fuzzy predicates,
is introduced. A case-based system prototype exploiting Fuzzy-SQL as a
retrieval engine is then presented.
Contact Author:
Luigi Portinale
Dipartimento di Scienze e tecnologie Avanzate (DISTA)
Universita' del Piemonte Orientale "A. Avogadro"
C.so Borsalino 54 - 15100 Alessandria (ITALY)
tel: +39 0131 287 451; fax: +39 0131 287 440
e-mail: portinal@mfn.unipmn.it
KEYWORDS: Case Retrieval, Fuzzy SQL, Fuzzy Similarity