INFT-867 --- Spring 1998 --- Dr. A. Motro --- 21 January 1998

Approximate Course Outline

Main subjects

(each subject will require about 2 meetings)
  1. Review of relational databases
    1. Basic definitions
    2. Languages
    3. Integrity constraints
    4. Null Values
    5. Database Semantics
  2. Knowledge-rich databases
    1. The Datalog approach
    2. What does knowledge mean?
    3. How can knowledge be stored in databases
    4. Basics of Datalog
  3. Cooperative databases
    1. Techniques for assisting users in the formulation of goals and in the conversion of goals to good queries
    2. Assurance that queries correctly express goals
    3. Techniques that analyze apparently proper queries for possible deficiencies in the goals that they express
    4. Epistemological (knowledge) queries and intensional answers
  4. Management of uncertain information
    1. Sources of uncertainty
    2. Current approaches
    3. Basic theoretical approaches popular in AI
  5. Quality of information
    1. The need for quality rating of information sources
    2. Using soundness and completeness to measure quality
  6. Intelligent integration of information
    1. Intensional (structural, schematic) vs. extensional (contents, data) inconsistencies
    2. Known techniques for reconciling intensional inconsistencies
    3. The Multiplex multi-database model
    4. Harmony: reconciling extensional inconsistencies