Predicate invention in inductive data engineering

Abstract

By inductive data engineering we mean the (interactive) process of restructuring a knowledge base by means of induction. In this paper we describe INDEX, a system that constructs decompositions of database relations by inducing attribute dependencies. The system employs heuristics to locate exceptions to dependencies satisfied by most of the data, and to avoid the generation of dependencies for which the data don’t provide enough support. The system is implemented in a deductive database framework, and can be viewed as an Inductive Logic Programming system with predicate invention capabilities.