Towards concept-oriented databases

Case-based reasoning (CBR) systems define knowledge in terms of a memory or library of past cases and a retrieval mechanism that revolves around retri eving data relevant to a goal query. Additionally, such systems employ an a daptation component that transforms the retrieved data into a solution to t he problem expressed by the original query. The combination of goal query a nd the subsequent solution transformation is referred to as CBR goal query. Goal queries are concerned with data that is close to the request expresse d in the query. Conventional relational and object-oriented databases are u sually concerned specific queries. Extending conventional object-oriented d ata models,:this paper proposes a concept-oriented data model that provides a variety of mechanisms to support conventional goal and CBR goal queries. It is shown that such a concept-oriented data model could be used as the c ore for a more general knowledge base management system. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.