On a fuzzy querying and data mining interface

In the paper an interface is proposed that combines flexible (fuzzy) queryi ng and data mining functionality. The point of departure is the fuzzy query ing interface designed and implemented previously by the present authors. I t makes it possible to formulate and execute, against a traditional (crisp) database, queries containing imprecisely specified conditions. Here we dis cuss possibilities to extend it with some data mining features. More specif ically, linguistic summarization of data (databases), as introduced by Yage r [16], is advocated as an interesting extension of simple querying. The li nk between linguistic (fuzzy) data summaries and association rules is discu ssed and exploited.