Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Database preference queries—a possibilistic logic approach with symbolic priorities

  • Published:
Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence Aims and scope Submit manuscript

An Erratum to this article was published on 27 February 2015

Abstract

The paper presents a new approach to database preference queries, where preferences are represented in a possibilistic logic manner, using symbolic weights. The symbolic weights may be processed without assessing their precise value, which leaves the freedom for the user to not specify any priority among the preferences. The user may also enforce a (partial) ordering between them, if necessary. The approach can be related to the processing of fuzzy queries whose components are conditionally weighted in terms of importance. In this paper, importance levels are symbolically processed, and refinements of both Pareto ordering and minimum ordering are used. The representational power of the proposed setting is stressed, while the approach is compared with database Best operator-like methods and with the CP-net approach developed in artificial intelligence. The paper also provides a structured and rather broad overview of the different lines of research in the literature dealing with the handling of preferences in database queries.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Agrawal, R., Wimmers, E.L.: A framework for expressing and combining preferences. In: Proc. ACM SIGMOD, pp. 297–306 (2000)

  2. Benferhat, S., Brewka, G., Le Berrem, D.: On the relation between qualitative choice logic and possibilistic logic. In: Proc. 10th International Conference IPMU, pp. 951–957 (2004)

  3. Benferhat, S., Dubois, D., Prade, H.: Representing default rules in possibilistic logic. In: Proc. 3rd Internat. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR92), Cambridge, MA, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA, pp. 673–684 (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Benferhat, S., Dubois, D., Prade, H.: Nonmonotonic reasoning, conditional objects and possibility theory. Artif. Intell. 92, 259–276 (1997)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  5. Benferhat, S., Dubois, D., Prade, H.: Towards a possibilistic logic handling of preferences. Appl. Intell. 14, 303–317 (2001)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Benferhat, S., Prade, H.: Encoding formulas with partially constrained weights in a possibilistic-like many-sorted propositional logic. In: Proc. of the 9th Inter. Joint Conference on Artificiel Intelligence (IJCAI’05), pp. 1281–1286 (2005)

  7. Börzsönyi, S., Kossmann, D., Stocker, K.: The skyline operator. In: Proc. 17th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering, pp. 421–430 (2001)

  8. Bosc, P., Pivert, O.: Some approaches for relational databases flexible querying. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems 1, 323–354 (1992)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Bosc, P., Pivert, O., Prade, H.: A possibilistic logic view of preference queries to an uncertain database. In: Proc. of the 19th IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE’10), Barcelona, Spain (2010)

  10. Boutilier, C., Brafman, R.I., Domshlak, C., Hoos, H., Poole, D.: CP-nets: a tool for representing and reasoning with conditional ceteris paribus preference statements. J. Artif. Intell. Res. 21, 135–191 (2004)

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Brafman, R.I., Domshlak, C.: Database preference queries revisited. Technical Report TR2004-1934, Cornell University, Computing and Information Science (2004)

  12. Brewka, G., Benferhat, S., Le Berre, D.: Qualitative choice logic. Artif. Intell. 157, 203–237 (2004)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Chomicki, J.: Preference formulas in relational queries. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 28, 1–40 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Chomicki, J.: Database querying under changing preferences. Ann. Math. Artif. Intell. 50, 79–109 (2007)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Ciaccia, P.: Querying databases with incomplete cp-nets. In: Multidisciplinary Workshop on Advances in Preference Handling (M-PREF 2007) (2007)

  16. Domshlak, C., Venable, B., Rossi, F.: Reasoning about soft constraints and conditional preferences. In: Proc. 18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’03), pp. 215–220 (2003)

  17. Dubois, D., Fargier, H., Prade, H.: Beyond min aggregation in multicriteria decision: (ordered) weighted min, discri-min, leximin. In: Yager, R.R., Kacprzyk, J. (eds.) The Ordered Weighted Averaging Operators—Theory and Applications, pp. 181–192. Kluwer Acad. Publ. (1997)

  18. Dubois, D., Lang, J., Prade, H.: Possibilistic logic. In: Gabbay, D.M., Hogger, C.J., Robinson, J.A, Nute, D. (eds.) Handbook of Logic in Artificial Intelligence and Logic Programming, vol. 3, pp. 439–513. Oxford University Press (1994)

  19. Dubois, D., Prade, H.: Epistemic entrenchment and possibilistic logic. Artif. Intell. 50, 223–239 (1991)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. Dubois, D., Prade, H.: Using fuzzy sets in flexible querying: why and how? In: Andreasen, T., Christiansen, H., Larsen, H. (eds.) Flexible Query Answering Systems, pp. 45–60 (1997)

  21. Dubois, D., Prade, H.: Bipolarity in flexible querying. In: 5th International Conference on Flexible Query Answering Systems (FQAS’02), pp. 174–182 (2002)

  22. Dubois, D., Prade, H.: Possibilistic logic: a retrospective and prospective view. Fuzzy Sets Syst. 144, 3–23 (2004)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  23. Dubois, D., Prade, H.: Handling bipolar queries in fuzzy information processing. In: Galindo, J. (ed.) Fuzzy Information Processing in Databases, vol. 1, pp. 97–114. Information Science Reference (2008)

  24. Dupin de Saint-Cyr, F., Prade, H.: Possibilistic handling of uncertain default rules with applications to persistence modeling and fuzzy default reasoning. In: Doherty, P., Mylopoulos, J., Welty, C.A. (eds.) Proc. 10th Inter. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 2006), Lake District, UK, 2–5 June, pp. 440–451 (2006)

  25. Fishburn, P.C.: Preferences structures and their numerical representation. Theor. Comp. Sci. 217, 359–383 (1999)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  26. Godfrey, P., Ning, W.: Relational preference queries via stable skyline. Technical Report CS-2004-03, York University, pp. 1–14 (2004)

  27. Goldszmidt, M., Pearl, J.: Rank-based systems: a simple approach to belief revision, belief update, and reasoning about evidence and actions. In: Proc. of the 3rd Inter. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR’92), pp. 661–672. Cambridge, Mass., Morgan & Kaufmann, San Mateo (1992)

  28. Goncalves, G., Timeo, L.: Sqlf v.s. skyline—expressivity and performance. In: Proc. of Fuzz-IEEE’06 Conference, Canada, pp. 9634–9639 (2006)

  29. Goncalves, G., Timeo, L.: Fuzzy dominance skyline queries. In: Proc. of DEXA’07 Conference LNCS 4653, pp. 469–478 (2007)

  30. HadjAli, A., Pivert, O., Prade, H.: Possibilistic contextual skylines with incomplete preferences. In: Proc. 2nd IEEE Inter. Conf. on Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition (SoCPaR’10), Cergy Pontoise, France, 7–10 December (2010)

  31. Kaci, S., Prade, H.: Relaxing ceteris paribus preferences with partially ordered priorities. In: 9th European Conference on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty (ECSQARU’07), pp. 660–671 (2007)

  32. Kaci, S., Prade, H.: Mastering the processing of preferences by using symbolic priorities. In: 18th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI’08), pp. 376–380 (2008)

  33. Kiessling, W.: Foundations of preferences in database systems. In: Proc. of the 28th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB’02), pp. 311–322 (2002)

  34. Lacroix, M., Lavency, P.: Preferences: putting more knowledge into queries. In: Proc. of the 13th Inter. Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB’87), pp. 217–225 (1987)

  35. Lang, J.: From preferences to combinatorial vote. In: Proc. of KR Conferences, pp. 277–288 (2002)

  36. Lee, J., You, G., Hwang, S.: Optimal preferences elicitation for skyline queries over categorical domains. In: Proc. of DEXA’08 Conference LNCS 5181, pp. 610–624 (2008)

  37. Lukasiewicz, T., Schellhase, J.: Variable-strength conditional preferences for ranking objects in ontologies. J. Web Sem. 5(3), 180–194 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Motro, A.: A user interface to relational databases that permits vague queries. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 6, 187–214 (1988)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Spohn, W.: A general non-probabilistic theory of inductive reasoning. In: Shachter, R.D., Levitt, T.S., Kanal, L.N., Lemmer, J.F. (eds.) UAI ’88: Proceedings of the 4th Annual Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, pp. 149–158. North-Holland (1990)

  40. Torlone, R., Ciaccia, P.: Finding the best when it’s a matter of preference. In: Proc. 10th Italian National Conference on Advanced Data Base Systems (SEBD’02), pp. 347–360 (2002)

  41. Wilson, N.: Extending CP-nets with stronger conditional preference statements. In: Proc. 19th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI’04), pp. 735–741 (2004)

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRISA/ENSSAT, Université Rennes I, 6 rue de Kérampont, 22305, Lannion Cedex, France

    Allel Hadjali

  2. LIRMM, 161 rue ADA, 34392, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Souhila Kaci

  3. IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062, Toulouse Cedex 9, France

    Henri Prade

Authors
  1. Allel Hadjali
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Souhila Kaci
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Henri Prade
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Henri Prade.

Additional information

An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10472-014-9446-2.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Hadjali, A., Kaci, S. & Prade, H. Database preference queries—a possibilistic logic approach with symbolic priorities. Ann Math Artif Intell 63, 357–383 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10472-012-9279-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10472-012-9279-9

Keywords

Mathematics Subject Classifications (2010)

Search

Navigation