AVOIDING MISCONSTRUALS IN DATABASE-SYSTEMS - A DEFAULT LOGIC APPROACH

This paper describes a cooperative interface that, using suitable user models, alters the processing of the user's queries to include additi onal information that will block faulty inferences. In a sense, the in terface actively teaches the user facts about the database that he did not explicitly asked for. User interaction with the database then bec omes a learning and discovery process guided by the queries he poses t o the interface. The paper also introduces a semantics for user models that captures, with the help of default logic, the nonmonotonic behav ior users normally exhibit. Finally, the paper contains results showin g that the cooperative interface generates enough additional informati on to block all faulty inferences.