KNOWLEDGE-BASED APPROACH TO DATABASE DESIGN DIAGNOSIS ― IMPROVING PERFORMANCE WITH DOMAIN SPECIFIC THESAURUS STRUCTURE

摘要

Techniques to representing and exploiting domain knowledge have been long used by knowledge-based (KB) database design tools when performing the task of design synthesis. However, the capacity of such representation of knowledge to enhance the diagnostic capabilities of the KB database design tools has yet to be explored and evaluated. This paper presents such an evaluation, focusing upon the thesaurus technique. Findings suggest that the use of this technique has the potential to increase the diagnostic capabilities of the KB database design tools by facilitating the detection and subsequent resolving of design inconsistencies that would remain undiscovered in situations where system-held domain knowledge was not available.