Context in Information Bases
Manos Theodorakis
1,2, Anastasia
Analyti 1, Panos
Constantopoulos1,2, and Nikos Spyratos3
1 Institute
of Computer Science , FORTH, P.O.Box 1385, GR 711 10 Heraklion, Crete,
Greece
2 Department
of Computer Science , University of Crete
3 Universite de Paris-Sud, LRI-Bat 490, 91405
Orsay Cedex, France
email: { etheodor
| analyti | panos
}@ics.forth.gr | spyratos@lri.fr
Abstract:
Although semantic data models provide expressive
conceptual modeling mechanisms, they do not support context, i.e. providing
controlled partial information on conceptual entities by viewing them from
different viewpoints or in different situations. In this paper, we present
a model for representing contexts in information bases along with a set
of operations for manipulating contexts. These operations support creating,
updating, combining, and comparing contexts. Our model contributes to the
efficient handling of information, especially in distributed, cooperative
environments, as it enables (i) representing (possibly overlapping) partitions
of an information base; (ii) partial representations of objects, (iii)
flexible naming (e.g. relative names, synonyms and homonyms), (iv) focusing
attention, and (v) combining and comparing different partial representations.
This work advances towards the development of a formal framework intended
to clarify several theoretical and practical issues related to the notion
of context. The use of context in a cooperative environment is illustrated
through a detailed example.